


Saving Corporal Baird

by Drogna



Category: Gears of War (Video Games)
Genre: Damon is bad at being sick, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Marcus, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 47,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2738657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drogna/pseuds/Drogna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baird and Marcus are injured while on a routine patrol and sent to a field hospital. As the grubs get closer to their position, it's up to Marcus to keep them both alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saving Corporal Baird

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere between GoW1 and GoW 2. There is a fair amount of swearing in here, as there is in the game. I've done my best to get my medical information correct, but I'm not an expert by any means.

Saving Corporal Baird

***

Marcus Fenix awoke in a hospital bed and knew immediately that their so-called routine patrol had been anything but. The smell of disinfectant was strong and other Gears lay on both sides of the room in utilitarian metal beds with green blankets spread over them. Most seemed to be injured badly enough that they weren’t going to be leaving any time soon, but then these days even walking wounded were sent straight back into the field.

The memories returned slowly to him as he mentally assessed his injuries. He’d been on patrol with Dominic Santiago, Damon Baird and Augustus Cole when they’d hit a series of emergence holes and suddenly all hell had broken loose. They closed the first few with grenades, but by the time the last one opened up, they were all out. Baird had scavenged something to make things go boom, but it required a little tinkering time to make it work. Dom and Cole had gone to flank left while he had maintained covering fire, and Baird pulled together the explosive charge.

Baird shouted that he’d completed his task and was ready to throw, just as Dom and Cole made it to cover and opened fire properly. Marcus was pretty happy that this was going to work as planned, so he gave Baird the go ahead. Unfortunately none of them had seen the group of Diggers that had hidden themselves behind a ruined building. The first clue that they had was the trademark shout of “Dig!” as one of the monsters fired its weapon at them.

Baird threw himself sideways to avoid the impact of the explosion but it clearly dazed him. He was on his knees and the makeshift explosive, primed and about to detonate lay beside him. Marcus lunged for it and threw it at the hole, grabbing Baird and pushing him down and out of the explosion’s radius as he did so. The hole was closed but the Diggers were still out there. Baird shook his head to clear it, and began pushing himself to his feet. Marcus got back into firing position, thinking that Baird was fine and back in the game, just as he heard another shout of “Dig!”.

Dom and Cole were firing an unrelenting torrent of bullets at the Diggers, and a couple had gone down. The last missile had been fired towards Marcus and Baird though. It flew up and out of the ground, glancing off the side of a nearby building before exploding in some nearby empty imulsion drums. Baird was too close and didn’t seem to have got his wits about him enough to get down. Pieces of shredded metal ripped into his armour and exposed flesh. Marcus could already see blood pooling on the dirt beneath him.

“Baird’s down,” he shouted into his com, and began running towards the blond combat engineer. He was too occupied with getting to Baird to notice that another missile was heading towards their position. It leapt out of the ground and exploded in the air. The shockwave sent Marcus slamming into the wall, his head making contact hard. He stayed conscious just long enough to see the final Digger go down to Cole’s bullets, and hear Dom shouting something over his com.

So it wasn’t that surprising that he was feeling sore and in the hospital. Nothing seemed broken though, so his armour must have protected him. He looked around for a nurse and didn’t have to wait long to find one.

“Sergeant Fenix, good to see you awake,” said one of the medics as he approached. He was young and dark haired, wearing the uniform of the COG Medical Corps. “I’m Private Dorn and in charge of the ward.” He picked up the chart at the end of the bed.

“Where am I?” asked Marcus, his voice even rougher than usual. He looked around him for the first time at the crumbling, ornate building in which he lay.

“Maran Field Hospital, used to be the Midas Casino and Hotel, but we’ve taken it over and it serves our needs. You had a concussion, bruising and a few scrapes that we’ve patched up. You should be fine to get back to your unit tomorrow.” He barely even looked at Marcus as he spoke.

There was the sound of a far off explosion and the room shook. Some of the soldiers around the room moaned a little, perhaps scared or just in pain from the vibration, he didn’t know.

“I came in with a Corporal Baird. Where is he?”

Dorn frowned. “Let me check.”

He left the room and returned about fifteen minutes later.

“Still in surgery,” said Dorn, as he finally met Marcus’ eyes.

“Still?” he asked. “How long have I been out?”

Dorn checked his watch. “The two of you were brought in about six hours ago. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for your buddy, he looked pretty bad and he coded once before they even got him into surgery. Plus he’s B positive and that’s a rare blood type around here. They’ll be lucky if they can scrape together enough to finish the operation.”

“That’s my blood type, asshole,” said Marcus, throwing back the covers and pointing to the inscription on his COG tags that gave his blood type. He’d truly never thought to ask what Baird’s blood type was and hadn’t realised that they shared the same one.

“You’re not up to donating blood at the moment, Sergeant,” said Dorn. “You certainly shouldn’t be on your feet.”

“Screw you, take some blood and get it to Baird or I’ll find someone who will.” Marcus stood and drew himself up to his full height. His imposing presence was enough to make Dorn pale, and he wasn’t even wearing his armour.

“Yes, sir,” said Dorn.

“Don’t call me “sir”,” ground out Marcus. “Get going, Private.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Dorn scuttled out of the room.

Marcus was glad of this because a wave of dizziness and nausea had just washed over him and he sat back down on the metal cot with a thump. He didn’t want to lose his advantage and appear weak in front of Dorn. The dizziness stilled after a few moments and the sick feeling in his stomach passed. It was replaced with an understanding of the information which the medic had imparted before he left. Baird was in surgery, suffering from severe blood loss and his condition was critical. It sounded as if he wasn’t expected to even survive the surgery to patch him up. Throw in Baird’s fairly rare blood type and things weren’t looking good.

The blond engineer had irritated him from day one when they met in the House of Sovereigns, but despite that he’d actually begun to regard Baird as a friend. He also had no idea how he’d break the news to Cole that his best friend hadn’t made it if Baird died. That reminded him that he didn’t know where Cole and Dom were, something else he needed to ask about.

He was cursing himself for not realising that Baird was still dazed from the first explosion and leaving him to protect himself, when Dorn returned. He held a needle and other things that were clearly for taking blood. A tall woman followed him. She was older and greying around the temples.

“I’m Doctor Hayman, I’ve just finished stitching your friend back together. He’ll be out soon and as there’s a slot in here, we’re going to kill two birds with one stone. Private Dorn here is going to hook up a direct transfusion, assuming you answer these questions for me in the negative.” She grabbed Marcus’ chart and flipped a page over.

Marcus just gave a shrug and a nod.

“Do you have a cold or flu?” The doctor looked at him with piercing eyes, waiting for her answer.

“No.”

“Do you suffer from any blood borne diseases, including sexually transmitted diseases?”

“No.”

“Have you had a new tattoo in the last six months?”

“No.”

“Have you been exposed to a Rust Lung patient in the last two months?

“What’s Rust Lung?” asked Marcus.

“Something that you don’t want to get. That’s a no, then,” said Hayman. “Fine, we’ll hook you up to your friend and for his sake I hope you’ve answered truthfully. He doesn’t have the time for me to screen you in the normal way.”

Marcus was about to reply but some medics wheeled Baird into the room, and the sight of the usually animated engineer laid out on the gurney stopped him in his tracks. Baird was pale, almost white and wound in a range of medical monitoring devices. The most alarming thing was the tube that was down his throat. Marcus had only ever known ventilators used on the sickest of patients.

“Lie down, please, Sergeant,” said Dorn, as he wiped an area of Marcus’ skin ready for a needle to be inserted.

Another couple of medics were moving Baird gently onto the bed beside Marcus’ own, and then hooking up transfusion equipment. Marcus could see Baird had a large dressing over his abdomen and bandages around his left arm and leg, the side closest to Marcus.

“He’s a lucky man,” said Hayman. “If you hadn’t been here then I doubt he’d have a chance of surviving the recovery from the operation. He still may not make it, but another blood transfusion should help.” She started checking over the various tubes and lines that ran into and from Baird’s body.

“Yeah, he’s had a real lucky day,” said Marcus, sarcasm dripping from his words as he lay back to let the medic plug the tube from his vein into Baird’s IV port. It took a few seconds for the blood to make its way down the clear plastic tubing, through some sort of pumping device and into the other man’s arm.

“I’d advise staying still for a while, Sergeant Fenix,” said Hayman. “I’m going to take a couple of pints from you and that isn’t going to make you feel terribly good. However, you have the resources to replenish your own stocks at the moment, which Corporal Baird doesn’t.”

“Take what you need to, Doc,” said Marcus.

He couldn’t help but stare at Baird. He looked half dead, but the monitors told him, only slightly reassuringly, that he still lived.  He’d prefer to check for himself, but that seemed out of the question for the moment. He was used to the sensation of blood loss; he’d had his fair share of battle wounds, so he was quite prepared for the weakness and general wooziness.

“What are his injuries?” asked Marcus.

Hayman wrote something on Baird’s chart. “He has extensive internal injuries, that I have just spent several hours repairing, and a number of deep cuts to his extremities. Whatever it was that hit him broke into shards of metal that cut him to ribbons. Some of them were buried deep, but I got them all in the end. The worry is going to be the internal bleeding as the wounds heal, but I’ve inserted a drain and hopefully we can recycle the blood that we collect. We don’t want to drain you dry, Sergeant.”

“Yeah, I’d appreciate if you left me enough to keep my heart beating,” replied Marcus.

“Don’t worry, dead Gears don’t look good on our books and the Chairman is adamant that he needs every single one of you alive,” replied Hayman, dryly.

“Good to know,” said Marcus, settling into his pillow.

Doctor Hayman and her medics left and Marcus found himself getting tired. He fell asleep to the sounds of Baird’s heart monitor, the whoosh of his ventilator and the thud of distant explosions from the outside world. When he awoke, the blood transfusion had been disconnected and although he felt as bad as Hayman had predicted, Baird did seem to have a little more colour to him. Nothing else had really changed though, except that it was now morning. The Gears in the other beds were either sleeping or talking in quiet voices.

Marcus asked if there was any way that he could contact his unit, _their_ unit he corrected looking at Baird. Dorn said he’d try to get a communication through to Anya Stroud at HQ, but he couldn’t guarantee anything because the coms had been on and off for the last week. Orders for medical supplies came first and lists of personnel second. Dom and Cole would be worried about them if they didn’t know what was happening and there had to be a reason why they weren’t here. Normally one of them would have waited to see how bad the injuries were, this was by no means their first trip to a field hospital. The difference being that on all the previous occasions the patch up job had been rapid and they’d left the same day.

The extra blood loss meant that Marcus was staying for at least another day and maybe longer if Baird needed another transfusion, which he did. So days passed while Marcus waited to hear something from HQ and was used as a living blood bank for Baird as required. Baird’s condition improved enough for him to be taken off the ventilator and he began to breathe on his own. He even showed signs of coming back to consciousness, but so far hadn’t deigned to open his eyes. Marcus was actually longing to hear one of Baird’s wisecracks, but Hayman had already indicated that Baird was on some heavy pain medication so even when he did come to, probably wouldn’t be particularly lucid.

Marcus had also noticed that the thuds of explosions were getting closer to the hospital each night, which was supposed to be well away from enemy lines, if such a thing could be said to exist when dealing with the grubs. It was a worry, but a distant one when he was dealing with a critically injured team mate that might still require transfusions to keep him alive. Still, he kept an eye on the situation and listened in to what the hospital staff were saying whenever he could.

***

Baird moved out of dreamland and into somewhere new within the range of unconsciousness with little enthusiasm. He felt like his brain processes were moving through some thick, treacly substance in order to just complete basic functions. Everything was so difficult, even just breathing felt tiresome and heavy. It stayed this way for some time, although keeping track of the passing of time was another thing that caused him difficulty. Slowly he became aware of small noises around him, an annoying beeping sound and voices talking.

“I thought you said he’d be coming out of this soon,” said a gruff voice. He recognised that voice and it sounded worried, or perhaps protective. It was one of those, but his brain couldn’t decide which and was too befuddled to care.

“Everyone takes recovery at their own pace,” replied an older female voice. “Give him time, Sergeant, at one point we weren’t even certain he’d make it this far.”

“Yeah, he’s never been a morning person. Any news from HQ?”

“We sent your names through with the last list of wounded, so they know that you’re here. We didn’t get any orders back for you, but I assume you’d rather wait until your friend is at least conscious before you move out?”

There was a grunt. “There doesn’t seem much else for me to do, now that the Grubs have taken the road to Jacinto. We’ll all have to wait it out until it’s clear again.”

Baird frowned at this. Where was he? Why weren’t they immediately heading out to retake the road? He tried to prise his eyes open but they wouldn’t respond so he made an attempt to lift a hand. An involuntary groan escaped his lips as he realised that movement of any kind was bad. His fingers twitched at the pain, curling into a fist at his side.

“Baird?” asked the gravelly voice, closer now.

Baird tried again to open his eyes. Something so simple really shouldn’t take this much effort. Finally he cracked his eyelids open and then quickly shut them again at the brightness of the daylight. He groaned again and moved his head to the side. He could smell the disinfectant and blood that clearly meant he was in a medical establishment of some kind, and that worried him a lot.

“Come on, Baird, you’ve kept us waiting long enough,” said the voice. Marcus. The voice was Marcus Fenix, his squad leader.

He tried to reply with one of his normal quips, but unfortunately just ended up coughing when he discovered how dry and sore his throat was. The shuddering from the cough wracked his whole body with pain and he wondered what he’d done to himself that hurt this much.

“Doc?” asked Marcus.

“Corporal Baird,” said the female voice that he didn’t recognise. “Slow breaths. I don’t want to increase your analgesia unless I have to. You’ve been out long enough, wouldn’t you say?”

He snapped his eyes open as he struggled to calm the cough reflex in his throat. He could see Marcus’ concerned face and sharp blue eyes. He persuaded his brain to focus on what was going on in the room around him. The Gear was sat in a chair beside his bed. The thing that struck him most was the lack of his usual do-rag on his head. He very rarely saw Marcus without it, and if he didn’t already know how much pain it would probably cause him, he might even have laughed at the spikey dark hair underneath. Then again perhaps the analgesia that the doctor had spoken about was making him loopy.

“Fuck,” Baird managed to say, as the coughing subsided. His voice was cracked and gravelly.

He heard the sound of water being poured into a glass and then someone was holding a straw to his lips. He assumed that this woman was the doctor who had spoken before. He drank the water gratefully, but the straw was removed before he could gulp too much. It was already sitting strangely in his stomach and he wondered if even the sip had been too much.

“I feel like I was run over by a ‘dil, and then the bastard reversed back over me.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Marcus. “A Digger hit a bunch of empty imulsion drums right beside you and you got caught by the shrapnel. My fault, I should have made sure you were okay after the first missile hit us.”

Baird frowned and searched his mind for any memory of how he’d come to be wounded. “Shit. I don’t remember what happened.” He grimaced at the pain in his stomach that even simply talking created. He tried to breathe through it, but deep breathing just made it hurt more. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh god.”

“Can you give him more pain meds?” asked Marcus.

“That depends if you want him addicted to pain meds,” replied the doctor. “We’re already at the point where we’ll have to step down the doses and wean him off as the wounds heal.”

Baird didn’t like the sound of that. “Give me a minute…” he got out, but he could feel the darkness encroaching on his vision and hear the heart monitor’s beeping increase in speed. He closed his eyes and felt welcoming unconsciousness hammer him into darkness again, his body going limp as he lost the fight to stay awake.

Marcus hung his head for just a moment before he looked up at Hayman.

“This is going to be hard on him,” said Hayman, putting down the glass and checking Baird’s vitals, which appeared to be evening out now that he was asleep again.

“No shit,” replied Marcus.

Hayman sighed and spoke quietly. “We don’t have the resources that I’d like to take care of a man as badly wounded as Corporal Baird is. And we’re running low on supplies. There’s barely enough antibiotics in the stores to give to every man in this hospital who needs them for three more days.”

“The Locust might be on us before that,” replied Marcus. “You might want to consider evacuating before they get any closer, Doctor. Head for Jacinto.”

“That seems foolhardy with the road being held by Locust,” replied Hayman.

“There are other ways to get to Jacinto. How many vehicles can you get hold of? Enough to get everyone out?”

Hayman thought about it for a moment. “Probably, but not everyone can be moved.” She looked pointedly at Baird.

“How long before it will be safe to get him out of here?”

“How long is a piece of string, Sergeant? A few days? A week? His injuries need to be healed enough that moving him won’t start the bleeding again. You already know how hard we’ve worked just to get him this far. I think there’s more of your blood running through his veins than his own at the moment.”

There was the sound of a much closer explosion outside. The room shook and dust fell from the ceiling. Hayman frowned, but hardly batted an eyelid. She had definitely been a battlefield medic for some time.

“I think we may be at the point where we have to call it. Is Baird the only patient that can’t be moved?”

“Yes. We haven’t had any new admissions since you came in - we sent them all to Jacinto as soon as it was clear which way the Locust were moving. And we lost Jessop this morning.”

Marcus had witnessed the passing of Private Jessop earlier. He’d simply stopped breathing with very little fanfare, and despite everyone’s best efforts nothing could be done to help him. His wounds had been very similar to Baird’s. He pulled his brain back to the situation at hand.

“Okay, then you take the rest of your patients out of here as soon as you can get them to their transport. You’ve got enough walking wounded who can handle a gun that you should be able to stay safe if you keep to the back roads. Leave me with whatever you can and I’ll get Baird out on my own, when it’s safe to move him.”

“Did you suddenly earn a medical degree, Sergeant Fenix? He still needs round the clock care, drugs and monitoring. How are you going to know when it’s safe to move him?”

There was the sound of another explosion, and more plaster dust rained down on them.

“When it’s not safe to stay here any longer. I’ll give him as much time as I can,” said Marcus, resting his chin on his linked hands, elbows on his knees, looking directly at Hayman.

“And how are you going to keep him alive until then?” Hayman waved her hand to indicate Baird, laid out on his bed.

“I guess you’d better give me a crash course in keeping a critical care patient alive and hope that I’m a fast learner,” said Marcus.

Two explosions followed in quick succession, making Marcus’ point for him. The grubs weren’t that far away.

“You’ll have two days at most, and even that might not be enough,” said Hayman. “You’d probably just be giving the Locust two easy targets. That makes two dead Gears instead of saving one and giving one at least a chance.”

“Yeah, I know, but this gives him a _better_ chance.”

“He must have done something pretty amazing to be worth this much loyalty,” said Hayman, glancing between Baird and Marcus.

“Actually he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s Delta and my responsibility. So start talking, Doc. I don’t want to kill him by putting the wrong stuff in the wrong tube.”

Hayman looked like she might argue for a couple of seconds, but instead she shook her head and began to instruct Marcus on everything that Baird would need to keep him alive and comfortable. She wrote notes for him and attached them to Baird’s chart. Luckily Marcus had already been taught how to insert a needle into a vein as part of his basic medical training, and he knew how to find and take a pulse. The rest mostly seemed to be about watching the monitors and taking readings, whilst keeping Baird topped up on pain meds and IV antibiotics. Hayman also gave him a few pointers on what to do in “worst case scenario” situations, which Marcus hoped he wouldn’t have to use.

When she’d gone through everything twice, she watched Marcus do a practice run on an IV bag change, followed by a couple of the other more tricky bits of Baird’s care plan. Then she left him to read her notes through and went to organise the evacuation. It didn’t take long for the hospital to turn into a hive of activity and to start emptying its wards into waiting ambulances and troop transports. The hospital hadn’t been anywhere near full capacity or they wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of getting everyone onto a vehicle.

Marcus went to see if the Gears assigned to guard the hospital had any spare ammo and weapons. He returned with both his and Baird’s lancers, and a crate of ammo. Baird would want his lancer kept safe; he’d made some small modifications to the trigger and loading mechanisms that apparently made it work better, although Marcus had never been able to tell the difference. He also took a snub pistol with the intention that it was something that Baird could wield if worst came to worst, and assuming he woke up again before they were overrun by the Locust.

Then he went to help out with moving patients onto the vehicles, and spent a couple of hours helping the nurses to get all the equipment that they needed packed. Some of the drugs and blood products had to be kept refrigerated for the journey, so this wasn’t exactly an easy task as portable refrigeration units were scarce. Hayman made sure that one was left for Baird’s medication, despite a loud argument with one of the other doctors about resource management.

Marcus ignored it. He didn’t want to hear what the doctor thought about expending resources on one critically ill patient. Not when that patient was a member of his squad. Besides Hayman was being fair in dividing up what they had. She was leaving him with enough medication to see them through to Jacinto and nothing more. If he couldn’t get Baird out of here within the week, then they’d run out of pain meds before the journey to the capital was complete. That would be very bad for someone with as many injuries as Baird, although Hayman had given him instruction for how to deal with even that.

It took most of the day to get all the medical equipment packed and the patients on board vehicles. The hospital had taken on a distinctly echoing quality as it had emptied, leaving one lone patient in one of the many high ceilinged wards. Marcus wandered back into their ward, looked around at the empty beds and then dropped onto his seat beside Baird’s bed. He had a few minutes before he had to do the scheduled vitals check, and he used them to watch the final ambulance leave the hospital grounds.

***

Dominic Santiago and Augustus Cole had made a ritual out of their morning pilgrimage to Jacinto’s coms room. Jacinto was fast becoming surrounded by badlands full of grubs and E-holes and turning into a fortress more than a city. The streets were full of troops moving between training, eating and sleeping. However, Santiago and Cole were only interested in finding two missing Gears and this was their best hope for doing it. So every day they trudged to HQ and asked if anyone had word of Sergeant Marcus Fenix or Corporal Damon Baird before returning to their assigned duties.

Anya Stroud stood waiting to meet them this morning, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence. She’d been as worried as they had when they realised that the medevac hadn’t taken Marcus and Baird to Jacinto. They’d been ordered to Jacinto with the other units deployed in the area and there hadn’t been room on the med evac Raven for more people. They’d just assumed that they’d all end up at the same place and had been kicking themselves for not checking. Procedure was to go to the nearest medical facility, but under the circumstances, they’d expected the wounded to be taken to Jacinto.

Anya stood in the grand lobby of the building. It was a huge atrium with a marble floor and ornately carved pillars, and had been taken over as one of the many military planning locations. Cole vaguely remembered it being some big, corporate bank’s head office.

“Dom, Gus,” said Anya, in greeting. “I’ve got news.”

“Good or bad?” asked Cole, getting right to the point. He was already imagining the worst. This wouldn’t be the first time that either of them had lost friends to the war. That wouldn’t make it any easier to bear, now or ever. Anya didn’t look like she was about to report a death though.

“I don’t know. Maran field hospital reported in yesterday and they’ve got Marcus and Baird on their patient roster. Baird’s listed as critical, Marcus is walking wounded,” Anya tried to say this as gently as she could, but really there was no good way to break the news to them that Baird was badly wounded.

“Awe, hell,” said Cole, hanging his head. “This is what happens when I let him out of my sight.” He knew he should have insisted on going with the mechanic.  Apparently no one had informed the Raven pilot that the Locust were moving towards Maran.

“Hey, Marcus will make sure he’s okay,” said Santiago. “So how do we get to Maran?”

Cole could already see where Dom was going with this, and was wondering if he could grab Jace Stratton and Sam Byrne to help them out.

“Dom, you can’t go out there. There’s a Locust offensive about a click away from the hospital and they’ve taken the road between Jacinto and Maran. The hospital called in last night to say they were evacuating and taking the back roads to Jacinto,” said Anya.

“Okay, so they’re coming to us. They’re going to need help. Those roads are cut up pretty badly,” said Santiago.

 “They ain’t going to stand a chance with all those Locust crawling around the area.” Cole shook his head with displeasure.

“They’ve got Gears with them that were assigned to guard the hospital and all the walking wounded will be armed,” said Anya. “At the moment we’re not sending any patrols out that way. We can’t spare the men. The Chairman’s planning something and he wants all the Gears to pull back to Jacinto. I can’t give you authorisation to go to help the convoy, as much as I really wish that I could.”

Dom was nodding with resignation. “I understand.”

“I don’t,” said Cole, getting steadily less worried and more angry. “That’s our friends out there, baby, and they need backup.”

“You think I don’t know that?” said Anya, crossly. “I’d give anything to put on my armour and go out there and get them, but we have our orders. If you disobey orders then you get brought up on charges and there are enough members of Delta with jail time on their records, don’t you think?” Her voice had become louder as she spoke, and she stopped to calm herself for a second before continuing at a more normal volume. “Look, there aren’t any patrols going out that way, but we might be sending something out towards Garnton. If that patrol were to find itself pushed South towards the road from Maran, then there isn’t much Control could do about it.”

Cole’s anger slipped away as he realised what Anya was saying. “Do you think you could put our names down for that patrol? We’ve been stuck here long enough and we’d like to stretch our legs, right Dom?”

Dom nodded. “Yeah, I think we could do with the exercise. I bet Jace and Sam wouldn’t mind joining us either.”

“Yeah, baby, I love a good work out,” said Cole.

Anya smiled for the first time since they’d begun the conversation. “Okay, be at the South gate and ready to go in an hour. That should give me time to rework the patrol roster and run interference.”

“Thanks, Anya,” said Dom, and the two Gears wasted no time in heading back to their barracks to grab their gear.

***

When Baird awoke for the second time the light was just creeping in through the window. It was dawn, and given that it was light the previous time he’d been awake, he assumed that he’d slept for several hours. This time he was careful not to move anything too quickly and minimise the amount of pain he was in. He could feel the fuzzy edges of some serious pain medication dulling the sharpness of his senses, but generally he seemed lucid. He could easily make out a sharp ache of serious hurt beneath the warmth of the analgesia, and already knew that it wasn’t that difficult to turn aching into bright, flaring pain with a careless action.

He searched the room with his eyes and was immediately struck by how quiet it was. Then he noticed the empty beds to his right and for a moment he wondered if he was alone.

“Where is everyone?” he croaked, his words sounding just a little slurred.

There was a grunting to his left and when he managed to turn his head, he found Marcus blinking at him from a chair beside his bed, as if he’d been sleeping. The beds on that side were empty too, and the only one that looked like it had been slept in recently was the one directly beside him, which was probably Marcus’s.

“Hey there, sleeping beauty,” said Marcus, as he rubbed at his eyes and grimaced at the early hour.

“Where is everyone?” Baird repeated, his voice still rough.

“They left,” said Marcus.

“I got that, genius,” he said, and winced because he’d spoken with a little too much force. And didn’t that suck hard that just talking hurt his whole body. Clearly he was totally messed up from whatever happened back at the E-hole.

Marcus was on his feet as soon as he’d seen the wince. “You okay?”

“What do you think?” he replied testily. He sort of remembered Marcus giving him the Cliff notes version of how he got injured, but it wasn’t a particularly clear memory.

Marcus harrumphed and waited a moment before he spoke, however he’d definitely noted Baird’s discomfort. “They had to evacuate. The grubs are moving this way.”

Baird could feel sweat beading on his face from dealing with the constant agonising background of the ache in his stomach and side. He licked dry lips and decided answers were more important than pain. “So why didn’t we join them?”

Marcus didn’t reply immediately, but reached for the water jug and glass. He didn’t look at Baird as he spoke. “It didn’t seem like a good idea.”

Baird watched him pour the water and then add a straw to the glass. He offered it to Baird who had observed this with interest and raised his head as much as he dared. He sucked up some water, but again the straw was pulled away before he was really finished.

“You’ll puke your guts up if you have too much, and that wouldn’t be pleasant for either of us. The last thing I need is you pulling your stitches open,” said Marcus.

Baird laid his head back on his pillows carefully and frowned. He was beginning to put a picture together of what was going on and he didn’t like it.

“Is that why it wasn’t a good idea? Am I too bad to move?”

“For the moment,” said Marcus, still not looking at Baird.

“Shit, Marcus!” said Baird, and immediately regretted the forceful expletive as he was wracked with pain. He gritted his teeth and this time wasn’t quite as bad as it had been before. He gave it a moment, while Marcus apparently checked something on one of the monitors, and then actually wrote something on his chart. Baird didn’t know whether to be amused, amazed or just plain disturbed.

“What are you doing?” he rasped. His voice was disturbingly weak.

“Taking your observations. Hayman was pretty clear that if I didn’t keep good records for her then she’d have my balls, and that woman may actually be more scary than the grubs,” said Marcus.

“Awwe, it’s so sweet that you’re taking such good care of me,” Baird snarled. “Rather than being smart and bugging out with the rest of them. Do you have a death wish?” Even this left him breathing harder than he would have liked, and once again pulled on every stitch that the doctor had put in him.

“No, but I’m getting the urge to kill someone. Would you calm down? You’re not up to this kind of shit.” Marcus replaced the chart at the end of Baird’s bed.

“I’m getting the impression that I’m not really up to anything more than breathing,” Baird replied, trying to get his temper under control. “This is just perfect. You decide to play martyr and I get a ring side seat. Just how close are the goddamn grubs?”

Marcus took his seat again. “From the sounds of it, we’ve got another couple of days before they reach us.”

“Is that going to be enough?  I’m not going to have my insides spilling out in the back of an ambulance am I?” The concern and worry were hard to keep from his voice, but he did his best. “Come to think of it, where are we?”

“Maran,” replied Marcus. “And we’ll just have to hope for the best when it comes to you spilling your guts everywhere.”

“Very funny. You should be a comedian.” Baird stared up at the ornate ceiling with aimless despondency.

“Yeah, and I didn’t even tell you the best part.”

“Why don’t I think I’m going to like this? Come on, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“The grubs are between us and Jacinto.”

“Peachy,” replied Baird. “Just peachy. So how long have I been out?”

“A few days,” said Marcus. Baird recognised Marcus being economical with the truth when he heard it.

“A few. So what? Two? Three? Four?”

“Five,” said Marcus, and picked up his lancer and a cleaning rag. “Although six if you count yesterday as well, since you slept through most of it.”

“Six days? Hang on, what happened to Dom and Cole? This is the kind of lunacy that they’d want in on,” said Baird tiredly. This conversation was rapidly sapping what little strength he had. Six days was a long time to be in la la land and it brought it home to him how bad things must have been. He was beginning to feel that he’d missed quite a lot whilst he’d been busy either dying or sleeping, and he didn’t like the apparent hole in his memories. His lack of energy was just one more thing to add to his list of “stuff that sucks about this situation”.

“I think they retreated with the other units, while the wounded were packed up and sent out here. Basically we ended up going in opposite directions. So it’s just the two of us.” Marcus had begun to methodically clean the weapon, seemingly oblivious to Baird’s hopes being continually crushed by his words.

“Okay, let’s recap. My stomach is held together with willpower and sutures, all the medical personnel have left the building, leaving you as my only hope of survival, the grubs are both heading towards us and in our way, and we have no back up. Did I miss anything? I think I’m actually running out of ways to express just how fucked up this situation is.” And good god he was tired, and apparently Marcus had actually noticed.

“Get some sleep, Baird. You’re going to need it,” said Marcus, his concentration on the lancer.

“I’ve got news for you, I don’t think sleep is going to help, at all.” Baird blinked tiredly nonetheless.

“It’ll help you heal and right now that’s the only thing you need to do.”

He simply grunted at Marcus and closed his eyes, feeling too washed out and sore to really contemplate continuing the conversation. If it could even be called a conversation. Sleep wasn’t a choice so much as a necessity for his broken body and it came whether he wanted it to or not.

***

Marcus had begun planning for how he was going to get Baird back to Jacinto as soon as Hayman and her convoy had left. The doctor had insisted on leaving him one of only three Armadillos that had been stationed at the hospital. It wasn’t a popular decision, but Marcus had agreed that it would give him and Baird the best chance of survival. More importantly he also agreed that the convoy’s chances of survival wouldn’t be significantly improved by there being three ‘dills instead of two. They needed to sneak, not fight. If any real grub resistance was encountered then everyone would be dead, ‘dills or no ‘dills. The same could be said for when he and Baird had to make their run for it.

Baird slept a lot, which Hayman had told him to expect for some time to come. It also gave him time to load the supplies that they’d need for the journey into their ‘dill. He left enough drugs and IV supplies for the day, in a cooler with some ice, next to Baird’s bed, and the rest he loaded in to the back of their transport. He didn’t want to end up rushing and forget something vital, because there was a lot to remember and Baird’s life was at stake. He also didn’t want to be loading up with bullets whizzing over his head, so doing it now seemed like the best plan.

Timing their exit was going to be the next thing to consider. He had to give Baird as long as possible to heal, but he didn’t want to have to move him whilst being shot at either. Ideally they would slip out before the Locust even realised that anyone was in the hospital, so Marcus would have to choose a time well before they were close enough to see them leave.

There was no way that Baird would be walking for several days, so he’d have to either wheel him on a gurney or get him into a wheelchair. The ground outside the grand entrance to the hospital was uneven and, whichever method he used, it wasn’t going to be much fun for the Engineer being bumped across it. Hayman had given him permission to dose Baird up with more pain medication, and left the instructions for the maximum safe dosages, but that risked getting him addicted. Maximum safe dosage was only to be used in dire circumstances.

He turned the back of the ‘dill into the best facsimile of an ambulance that he could, and hoped it would be good enough to get Baird to Jacinto. Then he filled the rest of the space with the spare ammunition and weapons. His father had always told him to hope for the best but plan for the worst, so that was the attitude that he was taking here. Hopefully they’d sneak back to Jacinto along the back roads and never see a single Locust, but experience told him not to take that as read.

He returned to Baird’s bedside in time to replenish his medication and take the required observations for his chart. This was a regularly scheduled task that had to be performed every three hours, day or night, meaning that Marcus was getting only broken sleep. But with everyone else gone, there was no one else to do it. His plan was to go back, do the required IV fluid changes and then grab a ration pack for lunch, but instead he walked into the ward and could tell that something was wrong.

Baird was making small distressed noises and was lying on his right side with his back to Marcus. It was almost as if he was fighting someone, as his arms twitched like he was trying to shove something away from himself. The movement was coming dangerously close to jerking out his IV line and that wouldn’t be good. Marcus moved quickly from the door to the bed and could now see that Baird was still sleeping, albeit whilst in the throes of a bad nightmare.

If Baird had been at full strength then he probably wouldn’t have even approached him in this state. It could be dangerous for both of them, Gears were trained to kill. A disoriented and scared Gear, being roused from a bad dream by his friend, could just as easily turn on his friend and strangle him as thank him. It depended on how deeply the dream had gripped him and whether he came awake fully or only partially. Several Gears had learnt the hard way not to shake someone awake from a nightmare. Everyone had them and the stories of bad reactions were rife in the barracks.

Baird was weak though, so it wouldn’t be an issue here. Marcus simply put a hand on an un-bruised part of his shoulder and gave it a shake as his spoke his name.

“Baird? It’s a dream, Baird. You’re having a dream, nightmare, whatever. Baird?” He got louder and repeated himself until finally Baird’s light blue eyes snapped open. Baird awake was actually almost worse than Baird being asleep, because he groaned in obvious agony and did his best to try to curl up on his side. He was sweating and breathing heavily, very definitely in a lot of pain.

“Baird, you’ve got to calm down. It was just a dream. It’s just us here, remember? And you’re not supposed to be doing anything more strenuous than breathing, soldier.”

“Yes, sir,” whispered a dazed Baird and Marcus wasn’t even sure Baird knew who he was, despite the fact that he was looking right at him. Baird very rarely called anyone “sir” and he’d never called Marcus that because Sergeants didn’t get called “sir”. Sergeants tended to consider “sir” to be an insult. Baird’s voice sounded strange and forced when he spoke again. “It hurts.”

“I know,” said Marcus, although really he didn’t because he’d never had anything more than a flesh wound, certainly nothing as extensive as the injuries Baird now had. He rifled in the medical supplies and brought out a vial of the emergency painkiller. He measured a small dose carefully with a syringe and inserted it into the IV port, depressing the plunger. “Just try to calm down, breathe slowly and listen to what I’m saying. There are no grubs in here, and if there were I’d blast them to hell before they got anywhere near us.”

Baird gave a half nod and the extra painkillers began to work. The taught lines of pain across his features softened and, although it took some time, eventually he got his breathing under control and he uncurled slightly. Marcus kept a hand on his shoulder for a few moments, until he was sure Baird had turned it around.

“Sorry,” he said finally. His eyes were glassy and a little unfocussed, but the extra strength painkillers would do that.

“What for?” asked Marcus.

“My brain is as screwed up as the rest of me, except you can’t put bandages on that shit,” said Baird. “I was dreaming of those wretches. The ones at the refinery. They scratched me with their claws. It’s probably all related to being turned into Swiss cheese by that Digger.”

 “You think?” said Marcus, sarcastically. Baird was still breathing more heavily than Marcus would have liked and as pale as a ghost.

He moved round the bed to look at the heart monitor trace and saw that it was getting back into a normal rhythm. He picked up the clipboard with Baird’s chart on it and began to note down the time of the incident, the extra medication and the abnormal readings associated with it. Baird’s eyes were roving round the room, his pupils wide.

There was the sound of an explosion somewhere close to the hospital. As was now a regular occurrence, dust fell from the ceiling as the room shook. This time the dust was followed by a large chunk of plaster and Marcus threw his body across Baird’s to protect him.

“Didn’t know you cared,” quipped Baird, as the chunk of plaster slammed into a bed a few feet away. Marcus had felt the muscles tense though and knew that Baird was afraid. Normally he never would have shown it, but the drugs were probably playing with his head and emotions.

Marcus straightened. He had a new problem now. He’d have to move Baird somewhere that didn’t have a ceiling that could come down on top of them. Protecting him with his own body was not a recipe for long term survival for either of them.

“This may actually be the first time I’ve felt better since I woke up,” said his patient. “I guess you gave me the good drugs.”

“Yes, Baird, I gave you the good stuff because you needed it.”

Baird chuckled and then seemed to regret it. Even the extra pain meds wouldn’t blank out everything. “Gives me some entertainment.”

Marcus realised that Baird wasn’t looking at him at all, but his eyes were following something that only Baird could see. The slight smile on Baird’s lips was almost worth the extra worry that this gave him. Hayman had mentioned hallucinations as a side effect, but sometimes they could turn bad and cause more trouble than the pain would have. He’d have to watch Baird carefully until he came down from this now, and that meant he couldn’t scout out a better room, or continue loading the ‘dill.

He sighed and slumped down in his usual chair. He riffled a backpack for field rations and sat back to wait out this new development, keeping half an ear out for more heavy explosions that might cause falling masonry.

***

As was becoming normal, Baird didn’t really know how much time had passed since he’d last been awake, although he was guessing he’d slept through another night. The drugs that he was on messed with his perception of time, and whatever Marcus had given him last time sent him off on a psychedelic trip that had him out of it for hours. So far Marcus hadn’t come close enough since he’d been awake to ask the time.

He didn’t like this feeling of disconnection; he preferred to be in control of the situation. Nor did he like how his usually quick mental processes had slowed to a crawl, and were still being annoyingly sluggish. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise though, because his brain probably would have been taking him through all the bad stuff which might happen if the internal bleeding began again without proper medical help nearby. Marcus’s Boy Scout routine did not count.

When he’d awoken this time he’d discovered that Marcus had moved him to another part of the hospital. It was on the same ground floor level as before, but seemed to be an older, sturdier part of the building. The ceiling here was vaulted, carved stone and that meant no more falling plaster chunks. Baird wasn’t sure that Marcus had made the best decision there. The ever present, but thankfully still distant, explosions might create enough shuddering to loosen some stonework. Falling blocks of stone would be far worse than chunks of wood and plaster.

However, Baird admitted that so far the building was holding up, and if the grubs got much closer then they’d have to leave anyway. He was ridiculously grateful that he’d been fast asleep when Marcus had moved him, because pain was an ever present companion at the moment and even gentle movement on a wheeled gurney would have hurt.

He could see the courtyard at the front of the hospital through the room’s large window, where the ‘dill was parked, from his bed. He’d been idly watching Marcus loading up for most of the morning now, with breaks for naps. Not for the first time he wondered why it had to be Marcus Fenix, of all people, who had ended up being his only chance of getting out of this alive. He wasn’t sure why the gods of fate liked to stick it to him so consistently, but they definitely had something against him.

He had always known that Marcus had a protective streak a mile wide, but he’d assumed that it only covered Marcus’ father, Anya and Dom. He’d heard the stories of course, about Marcus’ father and what he’d done to try to save him. Maybe us war criminals should stick together, he vaguely thought, remembering his brief tenure as a Lieutenant. He had only realised very recently that he’d actually saved Marcus’ life that day in Halvo Bay when he’d decided to launch the Lightmass missile and save Omega-Two. Marcus had been squad leader of Omega-Two at the time.

It all seemed like such a long time ago and yet this war was still raging. Every time they hit the grubs they seemed to bounce back again, and now it was looking like Jacinto might be their last hope for survival. He wondered what they’d do if it turned out that wasn’t going to work either.

This was another reason he hated drugs. His mind tended to wander aimlessly and start worrying about things that there was no solution to. He pulled his mind back to Marcus and wondered why the Gear had decided that he, Baird, was worth putting himself in danger for. Okay, they’d been through a lot since the House of Sovereigns, but they certainly weren’t best buds like Marcus and Dom. Also this awkward, caring side of Marcus was just freaking him the fuck out. The very idea that Marcus might put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him when he was having a bad dream was wrong on so many levels, and yet he definitely remembered it happening.

Marcus, in a much more characteristic gesture, had also left him a snub pistol. He had placed it on his bed in easy reach of his right hand, calming Baird’s latent PTSD symptoms before they really got going. Baird suspected Fenix had already worked out that he felt vulnerable without at least one weapon at his side, because Marcus would feel that way too. Baird wasn’t actually sure that he was even strong enough to lift it up off the bed to fire it right now, but it was more the principal of the thing that counted here. He’d have liked to wear his armour too, but that was just out of the question and would have been stupidly uncomfortable.

He was already cursing himself for letting Marcus see him in the midst of a nightmare, but right now there wasn’t much he could do about it. Marcus was all he had and he was going to be relying on him even more heavily over the next few days. He hated the idea that he was weak, and Marcus would have to protect him, but looking at it pragmatically, it was true. If Baird couldn’t even lift the weight of a snub pistol, then he wouldn’t be able to protect himself when it came to a grub attack. He certainly couldn’t drive a ‘Dill back to Jacinto.  Marcus was his only hope of getting out of this alive and god did he hate that.

Baird sighed, and decided that it was nap time again.

***

Dom, Cole, Sam and Jace had headed out from Jacinto in a Packhorse that had seen better days. They would have preferred to have been assigned an Armadillo but resources were stretched so all they’d been able to get was the Packhorse. They had been on the road for a day before they encountered any resistance, which was somewhat closer to Jacinto than they had been expecting, although none of them were that surprised.

Dom was at the wheel, while Jace was navigating them towards Maran. They purposely weren’t taking the main road from Jacinto, because they already knew that the grubs held it near Tarla Plain. It had been an area of fierce fighting for some time now, and the grubs were using it to prevent soldiers from returning to Jacinto. Delta had been tackling one of the skirmishes around the edge of the fight when Marcus and Baird had been injured.

The roads were crumbling from the rain and then drying out, and years without any proper care. There hadn’t been much interest in road maintenance for a few years in the COG territories, ever since it became clear that they were losing cities right left and centre. In a few places there were potholes that appeared to have turned into chasms, and Dom had to drive carefully to find a route through that wouldn’t tip them over.

Sam and Cole bumped along in the back, keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of trouble. Generally they weren’t talking much, which was unusual for both of them. Dom was usually the strong silent type, but Sam and Cole enjoyed bantering with one another whilst out on patrol. Normally they were goaded on by a certain missing blond engineer, who often ended up butting into the conversation, but not today. Dom missed the chatter and the lighter mood that usually accompanied Delta, even on patrol. He fervently hoped that this search wouldn’t be a fruitless as his search for his own wife had been up to this point. Marcus had been his best friend for a long time and he had no idea what he’d do without him in his life. He expected that Cole felt the same way about Baird.

None of them saw the Boomer in the ruins of a building at the side of the road, until it was too late to do anything. The rocket hit the Packhorse and the vehicle rolled sideways at the impact, its wheels spinning in the air. The Gears spilled from the smoking Packhorse, dazed but already readying their weapons. The Boomer wasn’t alone and had brought several of his friends to the party.

Dom shook the cobwebs out of his head and looked for cover. Cole was already moving towards a rocky outcrop of boulders that should give him a good firing position. Jace was on all fours, still getting his head together, but lancer clutched firmly in one hand. Dom hauled him to his feet and followed Cole, pulling Jace with him. He looked around for Sam as he ran, sliding the last few feet into place beside Cole. The Packhorse was burning and staying near it wouldn’t be good for their health.

“Did you see where Sam went?” he asked.

Cole gave a nod in the other direction, to a position on the other side of the road behind a stone wall. Dom could just about make out the top of Sam’s head. There was a shout of “throwing frag” and a grenade came flying over the wall towards the group of wretches that had just appeared out of nowhere. It was followed by two more and all three of them landed in the midst of the approaching horde. There was a series of small explosions and the wretches were cut to pieces.

“Good work, Sam,” mumbled Dom.

“Yeah, she’s definitely a keeper,” said Cole.

The three male Gears busied themselves with taking down the two Boomers, and Sam caught the monsters in a crossfire from her position. They didn’t last long after that, nor did the Drones which followed them. Delta was good at this and a roadside ambush was nowhere near the worst situation that they’d ever been in.

When the last Drone lay twitching, they emerged from their cover and surveyed the damage.

“Axel’s broken,” said Jace.

“We’re screwed then,” said Sam, wandering over to inspect the wreckage of their Packhorse.

“Pretty much,” said Dom. He didn’t know engines like Baird did, but even he knew they weren’t going anywhere with a broken axel. “I guess we’re on foot from here.”

Cole just gave a nod of acknowledgement.

Jace frowned. “Are you sure, Dom? It’s a long way to Maran from here.”

Dom nodded. “I know, but they’re moving towards us. Hopefully we’ll just meet them somewhere in the middle. We were making good time until we met these bastards.”

“I’m not turning around now,” said Cole. “The Cole Train doesn’t quit on his friends just because he might get sore feet.”

Dom smiled, and gave Cole a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Let’s get going then.”

They scrounged what they could from the Packhorse in the way of supplies, although some of it had been a bit charred by flames, and began walking.

***

Marcus had done all the loading of the ‘Dill and was now scouting out around the perimeter. The explosions had been getting a lot closer over the last few hours, although hadn’t increased much in intensity. He didn’t particularly like leaving Baird on his own, but at the moment he had no choice. Under normal circumstances Baird would have been monitored twenty-four seven, but Marcus had to sleep, get the ‘Dill ready and keep an eye on the approaching Locust.

He headed around to the back entrance of the building, keeping an eye out, and using his sniper’s scope to see into the distance. He’d been extremely happy to find that the hospital guards had two longshots tucked away in their ammunition store. He only had a few bullets for them, but that was better than nothing. He’d already patrolled this route twice today and found nothing, but he was keeping his guard up with the Locust closing in.

He took up his normal surveillance position, in cover behind a low wall, and looked through the scope. It was then that he saw a small group of Locust Drones coming their way and his blood ran cold.

He swore quietly. He thought that they’d at least have another day. He didn’t think that he’d given Baird enough time to heal sufficiently that he could be moved. The extra day and a half just wasn’t enough, he’d hoped for three although would have settled for two.

Now he had to make a decision. There were perhaps four grubs in the group, basic Drones and no heavy weapons. He could pick them off, and he might get them all, but if he didn’t and one of them ran home to mama then they’d have to get out quickly. Moving Baird quickly was what he had really wanted to avoid, because it would probably lead to difficulties and more pain. One alternative was that they could sit tight and hope the grubs didn’t find them, but Marcus didn’t like leaving things to chance and hiding Baird would be pretty hard with all the medical equipment. Or he went and got Baird loaded up and they left now, but that might mean that they were seen leaving and then they’d have more grubs on their tail.

He took a split second decision and lined up his shot on the first grub. He was a good sniper and knew that he could do this, although as a squad Baird was usually given the sniper role because he was often hanging back to collect intel. He needed four headshots if this was going to work and they’d have to be quick. He took his time and kept his first target in his scope while he just breathed for a moment. Then he pulled the trigger, feeling the reassuring kickback on his shoulder blade. The first grub went down.

He moved into a lightning rhythm of sight, fire, reload, sight, fire, reload, and four grubs lay on the ground with their brains spilling out over the mud. They’d barely had time to even see the first one go down. He breathed a sigh of relief and realised that his heart was beating rapidly from the adrenalin. He’d done it. He’d bought enough time to load Baird and get them out without being seen, at least he hoped that he had.

He shouldered his rifle, checked the surrounding area and ran back to the hospital at an easy jog. Baird was awake when he entered the room and clutching the pistol he’d given him.

“I heard shots. What’s the sit rep?” asked Baird, sharp enough to go straight to the important question.

“It was a patrol. I took them out with a longshot before they could tell anyone. I can’t see any others around, but where there’s one…”

“There’s usually more. Time to saddle up?” Baird asked, but the tone made it clear that he knew the answer.

“Yeah, I was hoping we’d get longer, but I think you’re up to it.” Marcus approached the bed, taking in the latest readings on the monitors as he did so.

“Yeah, and my name’s Chairman Prescott. We both know that I’m screwed and you’re having delusions of being a medical professional, but I guess we’ve come this far so we might as well continue on down shit creek without the paddles.”

Baird always had an interesting turn of phrase, and as usual was turning fear into sarcasm as hard as he could. His heart rate was slightly elevated but then Marcus couldn’t blame him for that. They both knew that movement was going to hurt like a son of a bitch, but it had to be said.

“We need to talk about how we’re going to do this. With your injuries, this is going to hurt. I can knock you out, but it’s a bigger dose of the stuff I gave you yesterday…”

“No,” said Baird, without Marcus even getting to the part where he tiptoed around Baird hallucinating for a good couple of hours. “I can’t shoot anything if I’m whacked out and seeing multi-coloured hummingbirds everywhere.”

“You’re not going to need to shoot anything,” replied Marcus, with a touch of exasperation.

“The answer’s still no. I need my brain to stop you from doing stupid stuff, and I can’t be somewhere in cloud cuckoo land with grubs around. Any other options?”

“I can give you more of the IV painkiller, but from what Hayman said it’s addictive and high doses will make you more resistant to it, more quickly dependant and harder to wean off. And we need to ration it if we want to get to Jacinto before it runs out.”

“That doesn’t sound appealing at all. No way. Incidentally, you’d make a lousy salesman.”

Every Gear knew someone who’d got hooked on pain meds. The addictive ones were cheap and easily produced, so of course the COG made extensive use of them in treating wounded soldiers. Marcus could understand why Baird wouldn’t want that to happen to him. Addicts didn’t tend to last very long on the front line, especially if they couldn’t get hold of any more drugs and went into withdrawal whilst fighting the grubs. It was a bad way to go. Of course that didn’t make things any easier on their buddies who fought at their side.

Marcus’ shoulders dropped about half an inch at having to tell Baird the single option that this left them. “Then we’ll have to do it on what you’re on at the moment, and you’ll just have to grit your teeth.”

“Oh yeah, that sounds perfect, more pain. Just what I wanted to hear when I woke up this morning. Fuck this stupid war,” said Baird, with a carefully controlled, but still angry, thump of his good arm on the bed. “Oh just get it over with so that I can pass out while you drive us somewhere that isn’t here.”

Marcus nodded. Baird didn’t like being seen to be weak and he especially wouldn’t want that in front of his squad leader. Still the reality was that Baird had to be moved and whilst Marcus could go against the mechanic’s wishes and shoot him full of painkillers, he wouldn’t. It was a violation of trust that he just couldn’t bring himself to make at the moment, although he acknowledged he might not always have that luxury. If Baird got worse, dosing him up might be the only way to get him back to Jacinto safely.

Marcus busied himself with disconnecting wires from monitors that were too big to be taken with them; he’d be using a portable one that ran on the power from the ‘Dill’s batteries. It didn’t have the range of functions that the larger ones had, but it would have to do. He unhooked the bags of liquid from the IV and laid them on the bed beside his patient. Normally someone would have held them up whilst Baird was moved, but Marcus simply didn’t have enough hands.

“Ready?” he asked, meeting Baird’s eyes.

“Yeah, time to hit the road, honey,” he teased. His increased breathing rate indicated to Marcus that, once again, Baird was king of bravado.

Marcus covered Baird with an extra blanket to ward off the chill weather outside. He ran the gurney’s straps across the blanket and pulled them as tight as he dared without hurting his patient. He didn’t want to risk Baird falling from the gurney if they hit a stone, but he didn’t want to put pressure on his injuries either. He’d need to be strapped down for the ‘Dill when it started moving too, so this had to be done right. Baird grimaced a little but said nothing, although he made sure his good, uninjured arm was free of restraint. The pistol that Marcus had given Baird remained clutched tightly in his good hand, which was luckily his right and also his dominant hand.

The first part was easy, he was moving a medical gurney designed to give a smooth ride across even, marble paved flooring. Baird seemed to relax after the first shock of movement and his eyes started looking around for potential shadows where grubs could hide. It was an ingrained reaction in every serving Gear. This part Marcus expected to be easy, although he was keeping his own watch on the surrounding area and had his lancer strapped to his back.

The problems began as Marcus left the hospital and moved the gurney carefully down the ramp which had been placed at the entrance. He had to bump the wheels over the join between the doorway and the ramp which immediately elicited a (hastily hidden) exclamation from Baird. The ‘Dill had been too big to get under the covered ambulance unloading bay, which had originally been where guests would arrive in taxis to play when the place had been a casino. This meant there was now a short trundle across uneven ground to the waiting ramp into the ‘Dill.

As soon as they left the ramp, Marcus could see Baird go rigid and his chest’s rise and fall speed up. His jaw clenched shut with a grunt, but that was the only sound he made. He continued to scan the area, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the pistol tighter. The safety was on, and Marcus didn’t think he’d even noticed.

“Hang in there, Baird,” he said.

Baird rolled his eyes, and showed Marcus a single finger with his less good hand. However he didn’t say anything, which Marcus took to be a bad sign given Baird’s usual constant chatter.

The ground was rutted from rain and then drying out, something which Marcus had barely noticed on his patrols but was now acutely aware of. They went over a large rut and he caught the wheels, stopping them hard for just a second. Baird took a sharp intake of breath and shut his eyes for a few seconds. He blinked heavily for a moment.

“Sorry,” said Marcus, but he kept going. He felt that it was better to get this short journey over with quickly rather than trying to break it up with rests.

As he got closer to the ‘Dill he wondered if Baird had actually passed out. He had gone from blinking to having his eyes closed completely. The little colour which he’d had in his cheeks had disappeared and his breathing was rapid. He wasn’t groaning or making any other noises, which was a little unnerving when he was clearly in substantial pain. A slight sheen of sweat was breaking out across his skin.

They finally reached the ‘Dill and Marcus pushed the gurney up into the back of the vehicle. This was the most painful part of the entire ridiculously short, but horribly stressful trip, as it required a certain amount of force and a final bump as the gurney folded its wheels and locked in place. Marcus saw the moment the rigidity faded and Baird went limp, his head falling sideways. He knew that the mechanic was unconscious now, but that didn’t make him feel any better about being the one to cause him so much pain. He decided to make what he could of it and see if he could get the ‘Dill moving before Baird woke up. He re-hung the various fluid bags and quickly connected up the portable monitor, before jumping down and stowing the ramp.

He closed up the back and ran back to the hospital to pick up the last of their things. This included Baird’s effects, part of which was a tatty pair of goggles. Marcus had been quite glad to find that they hadn’t been thrown away by the medics, since Baird would have grumbled a lot if they’d gone missing. He also grabbed his own things and the longshot which he’d propped up by the door. He jogged back to the ‘Dill, and climbed into the cab of the vehicle, putting his lancer on the passenger seat.

 He started up the engine and rolled forwards out of the main gates. He caught sight of a plume of smoke close to where he’d taken out the patrol earlier and knew that his work had been found. They didn’t have long at all before the grubs reached this location and it was good to be on the move away from them.

***

Delta squad, the officially on active duty part that was, found themselves on foot and they still hadn’t located the medical convoy that they were looking for. If Dom was honest then he wasn’t even sure if they were on the right road, but that didn’t mean that they were giving up yet.

The ground was as dry as dust, which was unusual for the month of Rise, but the seasons were all a little screwed after the Hammer of Dawn had done its work. Rain was expected any day, and the wind was bitter. These weren’t the best conditions to be hunting for their friends, but that wouldn’t stop them.

They had arrived at one of the satellite towns of Jacinto, Parlessa. It was now ruined and the people had been evacuated to Jacinto. The potential places for grubs to hide were huge and they were all on heightened alert. Dom stopped to check his map of the area, while Sam and Jace kept watch.

“What do you think?” he asked Cole.

“Anya said that there was a lot of grub activity to the East of here. They’re going to want to stay away from that, so I think we should go West towards Tarinth and then head back down this road, South East towards Maran,” said Cole, pointing out the intended route on the map.

Dom nodded. “Okay, let’s hope it’s still clear. We’re the only patrol out this way, so we won’t get reinforcements no matter how loud we shout. I’ll check in with Anya.” He tapped his com link. “Delta to Control, come in Anya.”

There was a second’s pause. “Delta this is Control, go ahead, Dom.”

“We’ve just hit Parlessa. We encountered some grub resistance on the North side of town. The Packhorse took a rocket to the axel, so it isn’t going anywhere. We’re on foot now. Have you heard anything from the Maran medical evac convoy or Marcus?” Dom asked.

“Transmission is patchy from the area we think they’re in. There may be a Seeder around there, so watch out,” said Anya.

“Acknowledged, we’ll be careful. Delta out.”

“Did I hear “Seeder”?” asked Jace.

Dom nodded. “It explains why we can’t get hold of them or the med evac convoy. Come on, we need to keep moving.”

“Yeah, baby, this is prime ambush country. Let’s get out of this ghost town,” said Cole, his eyes on the windows of the empty buildings.

“Agreed,” said Sam. “This place gives me the creeps. Let’s go find our boys.”

They didn’t get any further though, because suddenly there was the sound of gunfire and everyone was diving for cover.

“Where did they come from?” asked Dom.

“Must have snuck up on us while we were talking,” said Cole.

“Great, now we’ve worked that out, let’s get down to killing them,” said Sam, as she poked her head above cover just long enough to hit two grubs.

“Throwing frag!” shouted Cole.

“Boomers!” shouted Jace.

A few moments later there was the tell-tale “boom” and missiles flew towards their position.

“We need to flank them and close the E-hole,” said Dom. “Sam, Jace, move left, and Cole and I’ll go right.”

Sam and Jace nodded and ran, heads down, while Dom and Cole gave them covering fire. They then returned the favour as the other two manoeuvred into their own position on the right flank of the approaching monsters. They caught them in a pleasing crossfire, and three more Boomers bit the dust. After that it was simply a mopping up exercise to get the rest of the grubs and a grenade in the E-hole.

“I wasn’t expecting this much resistance,” said Dom. “The grubs are supposed to be East of here.”

“But since when have the grubs ever done what they’re supposed to,” said Cole.

“If they come across a convoy of wounded…” added Jace.

“Yeah, let’s make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Dom.

“I hope we’re on the right road,” added Sam, as she moved forwards to take point. “Blondie may be a pain in the ass, but he’s pretty useful when it comes to blowing stuff up. Still, I’ll be amazed if Marcus hasn’t strangled him before we get there.”

Cole chuckled. “Baird’s trash talking won’t bother Marcus. He’s used to it.” The former thrashball player paused for a moment and spoke a little more quietly. Dom rarely saw Cole in a melancholy mood, but this search was taking its toll on him. “I guess he might not be up to much in the way of talking if he’s hurt bad. They said he was critical.”

Dom gave Cole a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll get there and bring them home. Baird’ll be fine once he’s in Jacinto Med.”

“I really hope you’re right, Dom.” Cole sounded pretty unconvinced though, and normally he was good at seeing the bright side of any situation. Dom couldn’t help but feel his own concern for his friends ramp up a little bit too.

***

Baird was beginning to wonder if he was going to be free of pain ever again. Even as he came round, he could tell that the movement from the vehicle wasn’t doing him any favours. The most he could do was close his eyes and do his best to ride it out. He knew that it would have been worse if he wasn’t already on IV painkillers but movement pulled on all the wounds, all the healing muscles and skin. The painkillers just couldn’t cope with this concerted torture. He tried to stay quiet, knowing that Marcus didn’t need any distractions whilst driving along poor roads with the potential for grubs being around any corner. However, when the ‘Dill hit a pothole, he couldn’t help but groan from the shudder of pain down his whole left side.

“Baird? You awake back there?” shouted Marcus. He felt the ‘Dill slowing.

Baird found he’d unconsciously been tensing all his muscles and he was clutching a fist full of blanket. His pistol was missing and that sent all sorts of panicky thoughts through his head that were probably totally unjustified. The ‘Dill stopped, and Marcus scrambled back from the cab leaving the engine running.

“Baird? Are you with me?” The Sergeant was checking his vitals before he could answer.

Baird managed a single nod, and then concentrated on not yelling from the burning pain that was travelling around his left side. He knew that pain wasn’t just bad because it was unpleasant, it had a lot of other side effects that wouldn’t be good for his healing wounds or his recovery at this stage. The tensing was one, the increased adrenalin production and elevated blood pressure weren’t great either, but at the moment his blood pressure was probably on the low side from lack of blood, so perhaps it all just evened out.

“Baird?” asked Marcus, and Baird realised that he’d drifted away for a bit, whilst trying to deal with all the hurting.

“Yeah, ‘m fine. Jus’ need a minute,” he said. Even he was alarmed by how badly formed his words were. He couldn’t seem to unclench his hands either, they were just locked, and the rise and fall of his chest was too rapid with too little oxygen actually being taken in.

He didn’t even object when Marcus wound up the IV painkillers by a single click. He might actually have accepted the loopy juice again at this point, but he suspected not. He drew the line at giggling in front of Marcus at stuff only he could see (again), and he hated things that messed with his brain. He was close to kissing his sergeant when the warmth of the extra analgesics made their way through his bloodstream, and that realisation was both very, very wrong and too freaky to not be prompted by the drugs.

Baird knew any increase in pain meds was going to mean more pain coming off the drugs, but he thought it was probably worth it. They weren’t going to get anywhere if Marcus had to keep stopping to check on him when he yelled at every hard bump. He was finally able to relax, and his fingers uncurled slowly. His breathing improved, and slowed.

“How far did we get?” he asked, his voice sounding a little stronger.

“We’ve been on the road for nearly an hour, so we’re probably about forty miles from where we started. The roads are falling apart round here so I’ve been taking it gentle. Haven’t seen any grubs so far.” Marcus’ gruff voice was a surprisingly calming thing to hear at the moment.

Baird scanned the dark metal interior of the Armadillo. “Where’s my gun?”

Marcus wordlessly reached behind his back and put the pistol back within reach of Baird’s hand. “I was worried you might discharge it by accident.”

“In my sleep? Sounds pretty unlikely. Now me shooting the first ugly face I saw when I woke up, that was more likely.” Baird noticed that he’d actually come pretty close to what Marcus had actually been thinking from his expression. “Do these straps still need to be on?” He was feeling a bit trapped and claustrophobic. Wow, either he was a needy son of a bitch like this all the time, or the drugs and being injured were playing hell with his head.

“Yes, unless you want to end up on the floor the next time I turn a corner,” replied Marcus. He was scribbling on Baird’s chart again.

“Oh,” was all Baird could manage. He probably should have realised that. “Have you heard anything from HQ or the rest of the medical evac vehicles?”

Marcus shook his head. “Something’s interfering with communications. That usually means there’s a Seeder somewhere nearby.”

Baird sighed. “I don’t think this universe likes us very much. It would be too easy to just call a Raven out and head home for once. No, we have to trudge along shit roads through occupied territory. It’s going to take us days at this rate.”

His words were slurring again even as his finished the last sentence and he knew that he was going to be falling asleep again soon, because it had already been at least fifteen minutes since his last nap. Sleeping was probably better than being bored out of his skull he guessed. There was nothing to do whilst Marcus drove them further from Maran and towards Jacinto.

“It’s better to take things slow than have a ton of Locust on our ass,” said Marcus. Although Baird was pretty certain that one of the reasons that they were going so slowly was because it meant less likelihood of there being any complications with his injuries.

“What’s you plan for nightfall?” Baird asked, knowing that Marcus would already have one.

“I’ll go on for as long as both of us can take it, and then we’ll find somewhere to hole up until morning. According to the map, there should be an abandoned village up ahead called Clairette. I’ll rig up the laser trip wires and we can sleep,” said Marcus, with a shrug.

That actually sounded pretty reasonable. He sometimes forgot that Marcus did have a sound tactical mind, even if he couldn’t calculate pi to twenty five places. But Baird frowned at another thought, something incongruous. “The hospital had laser trips in their storeroom?”

“Yeah, I guess there was always the possibility that they might end up under siege,” said Marcus. “It should have been evacuated weeks ago.”

“Yeah, I’d love to get hold of the dispatcher that sent us out here rather than back to Jacinto.”

Marcus had that face which meant he was hiding something, but all he said was: “Maran was closer. SOP for medevac is to get casualties to the nearest facility that can treat them.”

Baird didn’t like being kept in the dark. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Marcus frowned and finished his notes on the chart. “The paramedic on the chopper made the call after you coded. Hayman reckoned that it was the right one, from the scuttlebutt around the hospital. You might not have made it to Jacinto Med. You coded again before they finished the surgery and they only just got you back.”

Baird paled, if that were possible at this point. “Fuck.” He paused to let it all sink in. “Fucking hell, Marcus. I died? Twice? Anything else you want to tell me?”

Marcus looked a little embarrassed, and he wasn’t meeting Baird’s eyes. This was never a good sign. “You needed a blood transfusion as soon as you were out of surgery, and they were out of B positive to cross match. It turns out that we’re the same blood group, so…”

Baird’s eyes widened and he just stared at Marcus for a moment. It wasn’t bad enough that he’d basically died twice, but Marcus had given blood to save him. He had Marcus’ blood running through his veins.

“They transfused your blood into my veins. God, I am never, ever going to hear the end of this. Is there anything else you want to do for me, Marcus? I mean you’ve already saved my life once, and now you’ve put your own life in danger by hanging around in grub infested territory. Where did this burning desire to save my ass come from? Usually people are all too happy to see me get my comeuppance, I’m told some people wish for it on a daily basis. Was this all just about trying to look like some big damn hero?”

Baird had to stop the rant to simply slow his out of control breathing, because it was hurting again.

“Calm down, Baird,” said Marcus. He was reaching for an oxygen cylinder and a mask. He slipped the mask over Baird’s head and positioned it properly before he turned on the gas. Baird breathed the oxygenated air gratefully. He wanted to carry on, but he was feeling dizzy and it just didn’t seem worth it.

“I’m just doing my job,” said Marcus. “You’re part of my squad and my responsibility. Besides that, I wouldn’t have been much of fucking human being if I’d let you die from blood loss when I could help. It wasn’t about being a hero, it was about doing the right thing. Why have you got such a problem with me saving your sorry hide?”

Baird gave it a few minutes, so that he could stabilise his breathing. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and Marcus had to strain to hear him over the hiss of the oxygen cylinder.

“I’m not worth saving. I’ve always been a screw up, but you, you’re Marcus Fenix, and I don’t like being in your debt.”

“Fuck you Baird, I don’t like having my men die on me. Live with it. And this isn’t a debt, this is payback for all the times you’ve already saved my life by creating improvised explosives and making technology that I barely understand work. That’s probably going to keep happening, so call it an investment in the brain of Corporal Damon Baird.”

Baird frowned. This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. “You can’t save everyone, Marcus.”

“I’m not trying to. I’m just trying to get us back to Jacinto in one piece.”

“If we even make it to Jacinto.” His voice was muffled by the oxygen mask, but the sentiment was still clear.

“We’ll make it,” replied Marcus, with a grounded certainty that Baird wished he shared.

The Gear stood and began checking the IV. He pulled out a new bag of IV pain medication and changed it for the one which was practically exhausted without a word. Baird couldn’t help but sigh as he was once again reminded of how weak and ill he was. Marcus removed the oxygen mask and turned the gas off. He gave Baird a glance and then clambered back into the cab. He started the engine and Baird braced himself for the movement, but at least now Marcus had wound up his drugs slightly and he didn’t feel it so badly. He closed his eyes, trying to fall asleep, and as usual it didn’t take long for him to drift off.

***

Marcus kept one ear out for sounds from Baird as he drove, and his eyes peeled for trouble. He guessed that he shouldn’t have been that surprised to hear that Baird didn’t regard himself as worth saving, but it still confused him. They spent a lot of time keeping out of the line of fire in order to live for another day, so it seemed strange that Baird wouldn’t be grateful that Marcus was doing everything he could to keep him alive. He wondered how much of it was the drugs talking and how much of it was what Baird really thought of himself. He just didn’t understand and that was probably why Baird rubbed him up the wrong way so consistently.

Baird was quiet now and probably sleeping, so he drove on until night began to fall. The road had been quiet and Clairette wasn’t many miles ahead. He could see flashes in the sky, now made clearer by the dimming light. Somewhere someone was fighting the Locust, and it wasn’t in the direction that he’d been expecting. The Locust were supposed to be concentrated around the main road according to the last intel that he’d had access to.

The skies of Sera displayed continual signs of on-going battle these days and there was definitely fighting off to his left side, where he’d expect it to be. That was the Tarla Plain, where Tarla had recently disappeared into the ground. No one quite knew what had happened to it and it was uncomfortably close to Jacinto. It was an offensive there that had landed him and Baird in the hospital in the first place.

He pulled into the remains of Clairette and began to look for somewhere to park the Armadillo that wouldn’t be too obvious. The village was mostly destroyed, but had probably been quite picturesque once. It was the kind of place that would have won prettiest village before E-day stopped all that civilian frippery. Now the cottages had lost their windows and roofs, and the larger buildings were crumbling away. The roads were turning into rutted mud and broken tarmac.

He found the remains of a building that had its front and floors missing. It was large enough that he could drive the ‘Dill in and they’d be about as well hidden as an APC could be. He parked up and turned off the engine. He needed to set the laser trips and then he could grab some food and get a couple of hours of sleep before Baird would need another IV change.

The he remembered that he should also probably try to persuade Baird to eat something. Up until this point he’d been receiving nutrition through his IV line, and Hayman had told Marcus that would have to stop soon, now that he was properly awake. Baird hadn’t shown any signs of being enthusiastic about eating, which was very unlike him. He and Cole both normally ate like horses, usually while they were bitching about how awful the food was. The nutritional paste in the medical supplies that he was supposed to get Baird to eat would probably not meet with his approval. One more thing for Baird to complain about.

He opened the door from the cab and jumped down onto the ground, pulling his bag of equipment with him. He spent the next half hour setting up the laser trips and putting in a few booby traps on approached towards their position. If any grubs were about then he wanted good warning. Clairette was still as the grave at the moment, in fact he found skeletons in one of the nearby houses so the metaphor was more literal than he would have liked.

He climbed back into the ‘Dill to find Baird awake and watching him with sunken, dark ringed eyes.

“You remembered to engage the friend or foe sensors, right?”

“Yes, Baird,” said Marcus, with a little exasperation. “You’re not the only one who can set a laser trip.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just feeling kind of…” he raised his good hand off the bed a little, gesturing, before it slowly fell back again. “Useless.”

Marcus climbed back into the ‘Dill and closed the door behind him. It was freezing out there and Baird needed to be kept warm. He was glad Baird didn’t want to have a rehash of their previous conversation.

“Yeah, well, not for much longer. Hayman’s schedule says we need to get you up and moving tomorrow. After that, you can take shotgun in the front.”

Baird’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding me. I can barely stay awake for more than five minutes. I’ll be a shit lookout.”

That was the usual role of the passenger in a ‘Dill. They kept their eyes peeled for hostiles while the driver concentrated on the road. Even intermittent help would be better than nothing though, and giving Baird something to keep his brain occupied was usually a good idea.

“Two pairs of eyes are better than one, even if you fall asleep on me. I won’t have to keep you strapped down all the time and I can keep a better eye on you.”

“It still sounds like a sucky idea.”

“You hungry?” asked Marcus, finding the backpack that had the rations and Baird’s nutrition packs in it.

Baird frowned, and shook his head. “That’s kind of weird.”

“Apparently it’s normal. Hayman said to expect it, but today’s task was to get you to eat something. So first of all we need to sit you up,” Marcus’s tone was somewhat apologetic, because he knew that movement, no matter how gentle, hurt Baird.

“You’re not going to take “no” for an answer, are you?” said Baird, resignedly.

Marcus shook his head. “Hayman was pretty clear on what she would do to me if I didn’t follow her instructions. She realised we aren’t in a hospital, but she still expected me to do my best to follow the care plan.”

“If she’s got you quaking in your boots then she must be one scary lady,” said Baird. “Come on then, help me up. Hey, if I’m going to be getting out of bed then I hope you brought me some clothes.”

“No, I thought I’d make you sit up front in your underwear. Of course I brought you clothes,” replied Marcus. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow though. One thing at a time.”

He moved over to Baird’s bed and started undoing the straps that held his patient in the bed. Then he very gently raised the head of the bed, so that Baird was in a more upright position. He kept an eye on how Baird was dealing with the discomfort that this inflicted, but although he was breathing more heavily, he seemed able to bear it. He locked the bed in position and checked that the IV lines hadn’t been tangled in the process but it was all looking good. Even the monitors agreed it hadn’t been too hard on Baird. His breathing was returning to normal reasonably quickly.

Marcus produced the pot of sticky-looking white paste and a spoon. He had planned to just hand it over to Baird, but the Engineer couldn’t really lift his injured arm, so feeding himself was going to be tricky. He pulled the top off the pot, balanced it on the bed and passed Baird the spoon.

“What the hell is that?” asked Baird, once he actually paid attention to what Marcus was doing.

“Your dinner,” he said, bluntly.

“What the fuck, Marcus? You expect me to eat that stuff?”

“Yes, Hayman’s orders,” he ground out, trying very hard not to snap and just shout at Baird to eat it. “Why does it feel like I’m dealing with a five year old?”

“Marcus, this isn’t even real food,” moaned Baird.

“You haven’t had solid food for days and bits of your insides had to be sewn back together. This is all your system can probably handle at the moment. Unless of course you’d prefer to try some of my field rations and then puke your guts up when it disagrees with you,” said Marcus, pulling one of the aforementioned ration packs out of his backpack with an annoyed tug.

Baird gave a theatrical sigh. “You missed your calling, Marcus. You should have been one of those hard ass hospital Matrons.”

“Shut up and eat,” replied Marcus.

Baird picked up the pot of white goo with his good hand, wedging it so that it was tucked between his legs and wouldn’t move as he ate. This meant that he could use his single good hand for the spoon. He poked at the gelatinous consistency for a moment, before diving in and after a look of extreme distaste, putting a spoonful in his mouth. He swallowed and gave a small shrug. Clearly it wasn’t as horrible as Baird had thought it would be.

“Actually, it could be worse,” he said. “I could be eating Anya’s cooking.”

“Or your own,” replied Marcus, with a twitch of his lips as he dug into his ration pack.

“Hey, I did the best I could with limited resources,” said Baird, apparently affronted by this slight on his culinary ability.

They both knew the incident that Marcus was referring to and what Baird had produced on that occasion was only barely worthy of the designation “food”. Cole had teased him for weeks, even though when it was Cole’s turn to cook he hadn’t done much better. The squad had vowed never to take field rations for granted after that.

Baird ate another two spoonfuls before he declared that he felt nauseous and couldn’t eat any more. Marcus didn’t push him to try to eat more because he actually did trust Baird to know his own body. Given how this contrasted to his usual eating habits, Marcus was pretty certain that it was his stomach being sensitive and he’d need time to build back up to proper food. For the moment he was stuck with eating the white goo and all the complaining that Marcus would have to put up with because of it.

When dinner was concluded, Marcus made Baird as comfortable as he could. He decided to take the precaution of strapping him back down, although fairly loosely, because he was concerned that he might roll off the narrow gurney in the night. He laid out his own bedroll beside the gurney, and did his best to get comfortable. Baird was asleep before Marcus had even finished lying down, still fatigued from simply healing his injuries.

Tomorrow they would be driving through more rocky terrain and Marcus hoped that Baird would be able to cope with that. On the plus side, the road was less open and there was more cover to keep them hidden. They would also have the added “entertainment” of following Hayman’s next instructions: get Baird upright.

Marcus took a bit longer to fall asleep than the engineer; his mind needed some time to become calm enough to sleep and stop his constant vigilance over his friend. His lancer was within arm’s reach, and he had a commando knife under the head of his bedroll. He had to trust his own ability to set a perimeter too, and to keep them safe, but his tiredness was so great that even worry couldn’t keep him up long.

***

Dom could see vehicles in the distance, and they were coming towards their position. A couple of them were even marked with the caduceus that denoted medical vehicles. For once their luck appeared to have come good. This had to be the convoy from Maran that they were looking for and although it had clearly seen some action, the vehicles were still running and seemed mostly intact.

The four Gears made their way down the slight incline, which was the road that led from Parlessa’s outer suburbs. It had taken them most of the morning to get this far, but their spirits were buoyed up by the sight of the convoy and the last couple of miles seemed less hard on their feet. Finally they were within shouting distance of the first truck in the convoy, an Armadillo.

Dom waved a hand in greeting, and the Armadillo came to a halt. The driver’s cab opened and a Gear popped his head out.

“Aren’t you a little far from your unit, soldier?” he asked, gruffly.

“Yeah, our patrol got pushed South by grub activity, but we’re actually looking for you. Do you have Sergeant Marcus Fenix and Corporal Damon Baird with you?” asked Dom. “They were injured a few days ago near Tarla Plain and evacced to Maran.”

“Friends of yours?” asked the Gear. His rank insignia marked him as a Private.

Dom nodded. Behind him Cole, Jace and Sam were keeping an eye on the surrounding territory. So far things had been quiet today but that didn’t mean it was going to last. Dom gave a quick signal to Jace and Sam to get on patrolling a perimeter to make sure nothing took them by surprise as they talked. They didn’t need to be asked twice.

The Gear drew his head back into the vehicle momentarily, then the door opened and he dropped down onto the ground.

“I’ve called Doc Hayman up. She’ll be able to tell you which truck they’re in and what their conditions are. I’m Karl Abaire and currently in charge of getting these people back to Jacinto.”

“Dominic Santiago,” replied Dom, and the two men clasped hands briefly. He introduced the rest of the squad, who nodded in acknowledgement. “We don’t want to hang around here too long. We just came from Parlessa and there’s some grub activity back there.”

Abaire nodded. “We came through a whole mess of grubs back that way, about a day ago in Etreya.” He indicated the road that the convoy had just been travelling down. “They’ve got a seeder screwing up the coms, but I guess you’d worked that one out.”

“Yeah, HQ has been trying to raise you. Our coms gave out about three miles back.” There was no contacting Anya for help now, they were on their own.

An older woman in a white coat could be seen walking up the road past the stopped vehicles. She reached their position, but didn’t look at all happy to see them.

“What’s going on?” she asked, bluntly.

“We’re looking for Sergeant Marcus Fenix and Corporal Damon Baird,” said Dom.

“Then you’re out of luck,” said Hayman. “They’re not here.”

“What? What do you mean they’re not here, lady?” asked Cole, no longer willing to let Dom do all the talking.

“Corporal Baird was severely wounded and moving him when we had to evacuate would probably have worsened his condition, it might actually have killed him. Sergeant Fenix recovered from his concussion relatively quickly, so he decided that he would get Corporal Baird out when he’d had another couple of days to recover. Obviously we discussed the risks, but it gave Baird the best chance of survival, and Fenix wouldn’t be talked out of it. We left him with medical supplies and an Armadillo. They should be on the road by now, a couple of days behind us.”

Cole and Dom exchanged a look.

“Sounds like typical Marcus,” said Cole.

“Yeah, it does,” said Dom. He turned back to Abaire. “Didn’t you say there was grub activity back towards Maran?”

Abaire nodded. “Yeah, we made it through by shooting anything that poked its head out, and staying on the move. We lost a couple of good men though.”

“Marcus and Baird are going to be walking right into that,” said Cole.

“Yeah, but we can’t just leave these people to get hit by the grubs in Parlessa either,” said Dom, he looked over at Sam and Jace.

“What are you thinking, Dom? We leave them some backup?”

“Yeah, I think the two of us can handle Etreya, if we keep to the shadows.”

“Hey, baby, you know I love a challenge,” said Cole.

That just left them with persuading Jace and Sam to stay with the convoy, which took a little bit of doing. Sam in particular wasn’t happy about it, stating the Baird was probably too badly injured to hold a gun and that only left three pairs of hands to shoot grubs with. The medical convoy had a lot more vehicles to protect though, and they desperately needed the extra firepower to get the wounded Gears back to Jacinto Med. Finally Dom was able to get Sam to agree.

Cole and Dom watched the convoy pull out, with Sam sitting in the cock pit of the rearmost Armadillo, and began walking in the other direction, hoping that they weren’t too late to help their friends.

***

Baird awoke several times in the night, usually to find Marcus snoring on the floor beside him, but on at least one occasion his squad leader had been checking his IV lines and vital signs. Baird didn’t stay awake for long at any point. He was finally awoken properly by the sound of Marcus stowing their laser trips and other gear ready to get them on their way again.

He shuffled a little to try to get into a more comfortable position and realised that it was impossible. The resulting groan alerted his keeper to him being awake and Baird remembered their conversation from the previous evening about the next thing on Hayman’s list of “stuff to torture Baird with”. Moving. It sounded so simple, but Baird knew that he was about to be in a world of pain and he wasn’t looking forwards to it.

“Ready to try getting up?” asked Marcus, straight to the point as always. He finished putting away the trips and began working on the straps across the bed.

“Not really, but you’re just going to go on at me until I do it, so I don’t really have a choice do I?”

“No,” replied Marcus, and left it at that. Sometimes talking to Marcus was like dealing with a brick wall.

Marcus pulled out a long sleeved t-shirt and combat pants. They weren’t what Baird had been wearing when he had been brought into the hospital, but those clothes had most likely been soaked in his own blood and cut to ribbons with shrapnel. These would do fine, even if putting them on was going to be pure torture.

The first step was to sit up. Once again Marcus carefully raised the head of the gurney so that he was in a more upright position. He disconnected the IV line for a moment so that they could manoeuvre the t-shirt over Baird’s injured arm. This took a little planning and thought since his arm was almost immobile at the moment. Muscle damage meant that moving wasn’t just painful it was physically not possible. It would all heal according to Hayman’s briefing to Marcus, but that process was only just beginning. So the t-shirt went over his heavily bandaged bad arm first, as gently as Baird could manage. Then it went over his head and was finally dragged over his good arm and down across his chest, being careful not to snag the dressings and bandages down his left side.

This was enough to leave him breathing heavily again; he was getting pretty tired of feeling like this, but he was under no illusions as to how long his recovery was going to take. He could expect constant low levels of pain for some time to come. He leant back against the gurney again.

“Come on,” said Marcus, holding out the pants.

“Uh, give me a minute,” said Baird.

Marcus gave him about ten seconds before he tried again. “Let’s get you turned round.”

Baird sighed. Marcus was in stubborn, immovable object mode and Baird didn’t have the energy, mental or physical, to fight with him at the moment. He slowly shifted himself and got ready to throw his legs over the edge of the bed. He did his best to ignore the fact that Marcus was supporting him on his right side and concentrated on controlling his legs enough to get them out of the bed. His muscles were on fire down his left hand side, but he managed to get himself to a position perched on the edge of the bed and pull on the pants with some help.

With no small amount of trepidation he gently slid off the edge of the gurney and put his bare feet on the floor. Marcus moved around to his left side, and he kept a firm grip on the gurney on his right. His legs buckled immediately, his left because of the injuries and his right because he had been in bed for over a week. Marcus stopped him from hitting the floor, but the sudden movement was making him dizzy.

“Woah,” said Baird. “This was so not a good idea.”

“Yeah, let’s get you sat down in the front.” Marcus supported Baird towards the cockpit of the ‘Dill, and sat him down in the passenger seat. By this point Baird was sweating and breathing hard again, so he leant back in the chair and closed his eyes.

“Can I have my painkillers back now, please,” he croaked.

“Hold on, I’ll reattach the drip,” said Marcus and Baird felt a slight tug on the IV line. Things began to feel slightly less painful after that. There was a tap on his shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see Marcus offering him a bottle of water. “Drink.”

Baird squinted up at Marcus for a moment, but took the offered water. This was followed by Marcus dropping a blanket across Baird’s lap, and strapping him in like a child in a car seat. Baird was too sore and tired to care about the humiliation of it all. When he was done, the Sergeant handed him his breakfast of yet more white goo and took the other seat, behind the steering wheel. He started the engine, and Baird got himself into a more comfortable position, leaning as much as he could on his right side. He pulled the blanket up around himself and watched Marcus reverse the Armadillo out of their overnight parking spot.

“Where to next, oh fearless leader?” asked Baird, as he tried to persuade himself to eat at least some of the white paste, but it really wasn’t happening.

“Etreya, it’s about a day’s journey from here,” said Marcus. “We’ll go down the valley road, it’ll give us more cover.”

Baird nodded. He’d once been to Etreya, and it was dump, but it was a fair sized town and would have plenty of places for them to park the ‘Dill overnight. They trundled through the broken streets of Clairette and out into the rocky countryside. Baird found that the increased painkillers were helping to keep the discomfort of the movement of the vehicle to reasonable levels, but he was tired and fuzzy from the painkillers. The skies were a foreboding grey colour and promised rain later in the day. They made good progress for a couple of hours, and then came across a problem.

“What the hell is that?” asked Marcus, looking at the road ahead. Baird had been dozing on and off so took a moment to work out what had elicited the exclamation.

He peered through the viewing port. There was an obstruction on the road, perhaps half a mile in front of them. “It looks like a landslide.”

“Yeah,” said Marcus. He was peering around at the sides of the valley that they were driving through, as was Baird. Both of them recognised an opportunity for an ambush when they saw it coming.

“This doesn’t look good, Marcus,” said Baird. “Give me the map, there’s got to be another way around this.”

Marcus looked Baird up and down, and then handed him the map. “You sure?”

“Shit, Marcus, I think I’m up to map reading.”

Marcus shrugged. “You were asleep a moment ago. Just see if there’s another road.”

Baird had just begun to pore over the map, when the shooting started.

“Hold on!” shouted Marcus.

Baird did his best and was glad that he was strapped in, as Marcus turned left sharply to avoid a rocket.

“Boomers!” shouted Baird.

“I noticed,” replied Marcus, tersely. “I can’t shoot and drive.”

“Seriously, you want me to try to shoot stuff with one working arm, and strung out on painkillers,” said Baird. The ‘Dill had guns but it needed someone to operate them, which was fine, but his vision wasn’t exactly perfect at the moment.

“Just point and shoot, Baird,” said Marcus, as he dodged more shots.

“Fuck you, Marcus,” replied Baird, but he manoeuvred himself so that he could reach the targeting systems. It was excruciatingly painful, but he was very quickly realising that if he didn’t do this then they were probably dead men. He started targeting grubs, ignoring the burning pain in his side as he turned, and fired.

“Do you have a plan or are you just going to drive around in circles?” asked Baird, as he was thrown sideways by another sharp turn. He let out a sharp exclamation, but really what else could Marcus do. If a rocket hit them then they’d be going home in body bags, assuming anyone could find enough pieces.

He got back on the gun and kept shooting. He’d counted six or seven boomers on the slopes and at least ten drones to back them up, and yes, that was a Kantus right at the back. If they didn’t get out of this box then they wouldn’t stand a chance, but the boomers had closed in around behind them.

Marcus was turning again, this time back towards the landslide.

“Marcus,” said Baird, warningly. “You’d better not be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

Bullets slammed into the armour plating of the hull.

“You have a better idea?” replied Marcus.

He could hear the Kantus screaming to their right. Baird had about twenty seconds to come up with a better plan, or Marcus was going to drive them up a sheer slope and over an unstable landslide. They had no idea what was on the other side either. Baird’s brain wasn’t as quick or sharp as it usually was at the moment, he had nothing.

“Awwe, hell,” said Baird, hanging on for dear life. He did a quick mental calculation. “No, I do not have a better idea. Punch it, we need to be going faster than this to make it up there.”

Marcus gave him a rather horrible grin that suggested that he might actually be enjoying risking both their lives with his stunt driving, and hit the accelerator. Although actually he was probably just glad to stick two fingers up at some grubs, thought Baird. He also wished more than ever that his left side wasn’t held together with stitches and surgical tape, because this would have hurt someone who was uninjured. Baird was about to be in a lot of pain, well, more than he already was.

The ‘Dill speeded up and took the steep slope of the rocks of the landslide at a speed which was nothing less that total madness. The engine complained, but the huge wheels on the ‘Dill had a good deal of grip, even on such a rugged surface. Baird could feel the rock and soil moving beneath them, but they were still moving forwards. They reached the top and crested over it with air beneath them, still going far too fast and now airborne. The ‘Dill landed with a heavy crunch, that Baird vaguely registered before the pain of landing drove him into unconsciousness. It was actually quite welcome by this point.

When he came round, the ‘Dill had come to a halt and Marcus was beside him. The Gear was tending to one of the wounds on Baird’s side and cursing.

“Any landing you can walk away from is a good one,” mumbled Baird, and tried to move away from the extra pain that Marcus was causing him.

“Stay still, Baird, you pulled your stitches open when we landed. I need to stop the bleeding,” said Marcus, his voice sounded annoyed or perhaps it was anxiety that he could hear in the tone.

“Yeah, because I really needed things to be worse than they already were,” Baird grumbled, as Marcus applied a new dressing and taped it down. He did stay still, however. “That was a shit plan.”

“Yeah, I know. The engine’s not running right either. I think we took a bullet to it somewhere.”

Baird frowned. ‘Dills were built to be sturdy and easy to fix, but if it took enough bullets to the armour then one of the grubs could have got the engine compartment. Normally he’d just pop outside and fix it, but at the moment there were some big problems with that.

“Is it still running?” he asked, unable to not at least poke at the problem. He loved engines with a passion and would spend all day tinkering with them if he could, assuming that there wasn’t any more interesting tech to play with.

“It was, we’ll see if it starts again.” Marcus finished the dressing, and then unexpectedly looked up at Baird. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” replied Baird.

“Do you need more painkillers?” Marcus asked and his hand hovered towards the IV drip feed control valve. He’d already turned it up a notch once, but Baird wasn’t willing for him to increase it again.

“No,” he stated rapidly and firmly. “I’ll ride it out. I can hardly see straight as it is.”

Marcus just gave him a small nod, disposed of all the medical paraphernalia that he’d used to re-dress Baird’s wound and turned back to the steering wheel.

“How long was I out?” asked Baird, taking stock of his current levels of pain.

“Half an hour. I had to get us far enough away from the ambush that they couldn’t just march over the landslide and hit us again. We need to get moving again. They’re probably telling all the other grubs where to find us right now.”

Marcus pressed the button to start the ‘Dill and it growled its way back to life. Baird could already hear that something wasn’t quite right with it though.

“Great, torture of a different kind. You’ve got to let me fix it,” said Baird. The sound the engine was making was grinding against all his engineering sensibilities.

“You have got to be shitting me, Baird,” said Marcus. “You’re still bleeding and even if I could get you outside without you passing out on me, you’d fall over before you could do anything useful.”

“Way to crush my spirit, Marcus. Why don’t you just tell me that I’m a useless burden that’s just slowing you down and be done with it.” Baird was feeling a bit woozy by this point, so he wasn’t really putting much into the fight. It was probably because he’d lost more blood that he didn’t have to lose. “You got some water?”

Marcus handed him a bottle of water, and began edging the ‘Dill forwards.

“It’s not about how useful you are, it’s about getting us all out of here alive,” replied Marcus. “It’s still running, so we’ll keep going. Now shut up and go back to sleep, you need it after what we just did.”

Baird had to agree with that one, as he sipped some water and then dragged the blanket up around his shoulders again. He looked out of the small window and noticed that it had begun to rain. That would make the going more treacherous and the visibility worse. Another bit of bad luck to add to their stockpile. Jacinto seemed further away than ever.

***

Marcus was annoyed with himself that he’d let them get trapped by such an obvious ambush, and he was annoyed that he’d put Baird through a fire fight which had resulted in him ripping open some of his stitches. The guy must be in agony and yet he wouldn’t let Marcus increase his pain medication. Baird could be a stubborn ass at times, almost as bad as Marcus himself.

Marcus checked the map. They were still nearly eight hours from Etreya, practically a full day’s drive and he’d have to stop to try to persuade Baird to eat some lunch at some point. His breakfast had been about as well eaten as his dinner the previous evening, and Marcus was worried that his charge wasn’t eating enough. There wasn’t much he could do about it though, he couldn’t force Baird to eat and didn’t think that would be a good idea anyway.

To make matters worse the Armadillo was damaged, and despite what he’d said to Baird, he wasn’t sure how far they were going to get before they broke down. He felt a little guilty for wishing that Baird was mobile and well enough to go out in the rain to work his usual magic on the engine. He glanced over at Baird and noticed that he was sleeping again, at least that was one good thing.

The storm was getting worse, something which might actually work in their favour. The grubs would find it harder to track them in the rain, but it would also make their progress more difficult. He tried the radio for the hundredth time, but there was still nothing. He would give a lot to hear Anya’s reassuring voice right now, telling him where the grubs were and what the next mission objective was.

The ‘Dill trundled on until Marcus came to another problem. There was a river between them and Etreya, marked on the map as the Ettree, which gave Etreya its name. At some point the bridge that they would have needed to cross had been destroyed, it was impossible to say by which side. Either the grubs had taken it out to prevent the COG Gears movements or the COG had taken it out to stop the grubs moving towards Jacinto. It didn’t really matter who had done it, there was no way for them to get across the river. Earlier in the day they might have been able to ford it, but the rain, pouring down from the surrounding hills, was swelling the river. Marcus now looked at a fast moving torrent of water that could easily carry a ‘Dill away.

He got the map out again. If they headed east along the bank of the Ettree, then there was another bridge where the river was a bit narrower. It was a much longer route to Etreya and Jacinto, but he couldn’t see another way of getting across the river. Marcus swore quietly, hoping not to wake Baird and turned the ‘Dill along the new road. At some point on this lousy journey their luck had to change, the problem was that they might die waiting for that to happen.

Baird stirred under the blanket and opened his eyes. He looked around fuzzily. Even drugged with heavy duty painkillers, Baird was still smart and Marcus could see him taking notice of the river on their right. It didn’t take him long to work out what it meant.

“Aren’t we supposed to be on the other side of this river by now?” his passenger asked.

“Bridge was out,” said Marcus.

Baird groaned. The engine spluttered. Marcus could see that it was getting on Baird’s nerves.

“That’s getting worse, you know,” said Baird.

“Well what do you want me to do about it?”

“Let me fix it,” said Baird.

“Did you get brain damage in that explosion that Hayman missed? I’m not having this discussion again.”

“Yeah, well, when it breaks down completely and you’re standing there scratching your head, don’t complain to me.”

“I think I preferred it when you were asleep,” said Marcus.

They drove on in silence for a while. There was a clap of thunder from the sky and then a fork of lightening hit the ground. The rain got heavier.

“Erm, Marcus,” said Baird.

Marcus looked over to see what he was whining about now, and noticed that he was looking at something in the distance. Marcus could just about make out something in front of them that looked like a rolling dust storm coming their way, which was impossible in the wet. They both knew what it actually was. The bad weather was the clue. A razorhail shower was coming in their direction, chewing up the ground as it moved towards them. Sera was throwing everything it had at them today.

“I see it,” said Marcus. “There’s no cover.”

“Shit,” said Baird. “ ‘Dills don’t like razorhail.”

“I know,” replied Marcus. Baird had a gift for stating the obvious.  Armadillos had armour plating but it couldn't take a sustained razorhail downpour, and if it hit the tyres then it would puncture them. The road that they were on was devoid of any buildings or trees, and the visibility was terrible through the torrential rain. “There was an imulsion station about five miles back.”

“Too far,” said Baird. “We’d never make it.”

“There’s something, off to the left,” said Marcus. He could just make out a structure. “Do you feel up to some off-roading?”

“Let’s see, let the ‘Dill get cut up by razorhail and leave us stranded miles from Jacinto, or risk tearing the rest of my stitches open. No contest. We do _not_ want to get stuck out here, off-roading it is, boss man,” replied Baird, glibly.

Marcus wasn’t happy, but he agreed. They would be in severe trouble if the ‘Dill was damaged by the razorhail. He pulled the Armadillo off the road and made a straight line path to the structure that they could see in the distance. The ground was uneven and Baird simply hung on for dear life, with his left arm pressed against his side. His mouth was compressed into a thin line of suppressed pain, and Marcus couldn’t do anything except keep driving. The razorhail was sweeping across the ground and would be on them any moment.

They could see as they got closer exactly what they were heading for. It was a church. The razorhail was nearly upon them as they skidded into the churchyard, knocking over gravestones. Marcus was not slowing down until they were under cover. Luckily the church appeared to be missing part of a wall, and there was a big enough gap that they could drive the ‘Dill inside. Its tires crunched up a couple of pews and another couple were pushed to the sides.

They ground to a halt, and Baird let out a pained exclamation.

Despite clearly being in a lot of pain, Baird decided that he needed to speak. His voice was weak and Marcus could hardly hear him. “Can we stop with the rally driver routine? I feel like the ball in the table Thrashball. Your driving is shit, Marcus.” His eyes closed, and his breathing was shallow and fast.

Marcus quickly undid his harness; he grabbed the bag of medical supplies. Baird opened his eyes at the sound of Marcus undoing the zip on the bag.

“Marcus, what are you doing?”

“Just shut up, Baird. Stop talking, it obviously hurts you and you’re already in enough pain.” Marcus took out the extra-strength painkillers, and drew a dose up into a syringe.

Baird rolled his eyes. “Marcus, don’t. I need to stay clear.”

“I told you to stop talking. You’re hurting, and you need this at the moment. Tell me “no” and mean it, I’ll put the syringe away, but I’m not going to judge you for taking some time off from the pain.” His eyes met Baird’s, and he waited for the word.

“Do it,” croaked Baird with resignation.

Marcus inserted the syringe in the IV port and added the extra painkiller to Baird’s drip. This meant that he’d have to keep an eye on Baird for the next few hours, but with a razorhail storm to sit out they weren’t going anywhere for a while. The hail was hammering into the tiles of the roof above them as Marcus watched Baird’s eyes glaze over and his pupils widen. His breathing evened out and his whole body relaxed.

Marcus sighed, hanging his head for a moment. He already knew how much pain Baird was willing to put up with to avoid losing the sharp edge of his mind, but he still didn’t like seeing it. It was then that he looked down at Baird’s side and saw blood, more blood. The wound that had been reopened by the jump over the landslide was bleeding again, and this time worse than before. He set to work with antiseptic and gauze, and hoped that he could persuade it to close properly this time.

***

Baird drifted in a soft world that had none of the sharpness of real life for an indeterminate amount of time. Time stretched out and passed without him really noticing. After the constant agony of being bumped along in the ‘Dill by Marcus’s demon driving, the lack of pain was utter bliss. Of course, it didn’t last. The real world had to reassert itself eventually and it wasn’t pleasant when it did. He knew something was wrong, because the pain in his side was worse. It had been a sharp ache before, that would morph into a burning pain if he moved wrongly. Now it was a sharp stabbing pain that wouldn’t abate.

He let out a moan, and immediately hated himself for being so weak. He tried to shift into a more comfortable position, but there was no comfortable position. He actually whimpered, it hurt so much, but he couldn’t help it. Then something changed and he found himself going under again, drifting along and once again the pain was gone.

***

Marcus removed the syringe from the IV port and glared at it. He couldn’t keep drugging Baird like this, especially not with the strong stuff. The wound that had opened up on his side had required some new stitches to close it again, and Baird needed some recovery time after all the poking and prodding that Marcus had had to do. He had basically just given him enough of the extra strength painkiller to sedate him for a few more hours and maybe by then it wouldn’t be causing him so much pain.

The razorhail had stopped after a few hours, but the skies were still grey so they’d stayed overnight in the church. Marcus now needed to get them back on the road and moving again, or the grubs would locate them. At least with Baird out of it he wouldn’t be worrying about hurting the engineer further, but the wound in Baird’s side concerned him a lot. It had bled and Baird had already lost far too much blood and hadn’t had nearly enough time for his body to replace it.

Marcus started the ‘Dill and reversed it out of the ruined church. He’d never been a religious man, but he’d felt like they were doing something wrong by using this place of worship as somewhere to park their ‘Dill. He very much regretted knocking down the grave stones. Like all soldiers who had seen their friends die in battle, he respected the dead and was sorry that he’d had to destroy someone’s grave to keep him and Baird alive. It couldn’t be helped though, the living had to come first, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and concentrated on getting them back to the road.

He turned the ‘Dill onto the main road, towards the alternate bridge and kept driving until the bridge was in sight. This bridge was at least still standing and fairly sturdy looking. It had only been about two hours’ drive from the church to the bridge. The engine spluttered again and he was glad that Baird was still in a drugged sleep and wouldn’t hear it. The sounds it was making were becoming increasingly alarming. It began to shudder just as he made it over the bridge, and suddenly all the power disappeared and the vehicle ground to a halt.

Marcus swore loudly and with every bad word that he could think of. Baird didn’t even bat an eyelid, he was sleeping so deeply under the sedation. Marcus climbed out of the driver’s seat and headed outside to see if he could work out what was wrong. He took his lancer with him and kept an eye out for approaching enemies. They were just on the edge of the outskirts of Etreya. It was probably another hour or two before they would reach the town proper. He opened the hatch of the engine compartment, and studied the engine beneath for a moment in the hopes that he could work out what was wrong with it.

Marcus heard the footfalls before he actually saw the grubs. They probably hadn’t even noticed him yet. They were in amongst the buildings and the ‘Dill was just sat at the side of the road along with half a dozen other abandoned cars. Marcus pressed himself to the side of the vehicle and reached for his lancer. He couldn’t quite see them, they were a little too far away and he had put the ‘Dill between him and the enemy. He caught the movement though and heard the guttural utterances that they continually spouted.

He looked around for more and better cover. He decided that a group of abandoned cars was his best bet. He quietly crouched and crawled over to them, finding a well-placed concrete lane divider to get behind. He needed to get an accurate count of the number of grubs that he was dealing with. If it was a squad out on patrol then he could probably take them, if it was anything more than that then he’d be better off hiding and hoping they didn’t find them. Ideally they’d have been in the ‘Dill with Baird on the guns and they could have ploughed on straight through, but Baird was out of it and the engine problem meant that it was a no go.

He really didn’t like leaving Baird alone in the Armadillo, even for the few minutes that it had taken him to reach his current position. He needed to deal with this as quickly as possible and then get the engine going again. He didn’t have the longshot this time, so he couldn’t pick them off one by one. He was going to have to do this the hard way.

He counted four drones and two bloodmounts, with riders. This was not a one man job by anyone’s standards, but he had to protect Baird. He might get one or two before the others noticed him, and the bloodmounts were going to be hard targets. They moved quickly and took a lot of bullets, but would be best taken out first if he wanted to live long enough to get the others.

He took a deep breath and got a grenade out from his belt pack. He pulled the pin and threw it in the direction of the approaching grubs. It hit and exploded with a reassuringly destructive bang. A quick check told him that he’d hit the grubs dead centre and one of the bloodmounts was down. It was better than he’d hoped for, but the drones were yelling. Suddenly Marcus realised that if he’d waited just a little longer, he’d have seen that there were four more bloodmounts a few steps behind the main group. This was not good at all. He’d be overrun in no time. He opened fire on the nearest target and kept shooting until his clip was out. He reloaded and did the same again, moving along behind his cover so that the drones couldn’t get a fix on his position. He took another bloodmount down as it galloped towards him, and then a third with its rider. That still left three more and they were on him before he knew it.

He sliced one with his chainsaw bayonet, which he followed up by putting a single bullet in the rider’s eye socket, killing the grub instantly. He yelled a battle cry of pure adrenaline filled hate, as one of the other bloodmounts hit him with a claw and sent him flying onto his back. He could see the final two bearing down on him, and he knew that his lancer just wasn’t going to be enough this time. He kept shooting, from his position lying supine on the ground. The gunfire was desperate, and he wasn’t really aiming properly at this point, just hoping the bullets found their way to the target.

Then there was the sound of more gunfire, but not from his own lancer. The first attacking bloodmount fell over sideways at the onslaught from a new position, its blood splattering the ground. The second soon went the same way, and neither of the Locust riders knew what had hit them. Marcus scrambled back into better cover and looked for the direction of fire of his surprise backup.

He could see two Gears huddled in the rubble of a building. He would recognise this pair anywhere, although he had no idea how they got here. The remainder of the drones went down without much further resistance, under the combined onslaught of three streams of lancer fire. Marcus checked around him to make sure that there weren’t any other less pleasant surprises lurking in the buildings, before leaping over the concrete barrier that he’d been using as cover. The three men met in the middle of the street.

“Dom, Cole! What the hell are you doing here?” He gave them the traditional Gears greeting of bumping guns, side on. In a war zone it was practical, as it meant you never had to put down your firearms.

“Looking for you, Marcus,” said Dom. “Man, you’re lucky we got here when we did.”

“Yeah, the save is appreciated,” replied Marcus, actually smiling at seeing his friends.

“It’s not that we’re not happy to see you, Marcus, but where’s Baird?” asked Cole. “We heard he wasn’t doing so well.”

Marcus’ smile disappeared. “Yeah, he’s not in good shape. I’ve got him in the ‘Dill, dosed up on amorphan.” He indicated the broken down Armadillo. “The journey’s been tough on him and he wasn’t in great shape when we set out. I had to stitch him up again earlier because all the bumping about pulled open one of his wounds. Come on back to the ‘Dill, I’ll give you the full story.”

Dom and Cole nodded, none of them liked standing out in the open. It invited trouble. They walked back to the ‘Dill and Marcus told them about the journey from Maran as they went. It didn’t take long and he finished by telling them that the ‘Dill had broken down as they’d entered Etreya’s suburbs. He opened the hatch so that everyone could climb on board. Three Gears in plate armour took up a fair bit of the interior of the ‘Dill, but there was room for them all and the medical equipment.

“Hell, baby, this is kitted out better than some hospitals I’ve been to,” said Cole, as he scanned the interior. “Damon, hey, you still sleeping?”

There was no reply from the sleeping engineer.

“I’ll take that as a “yes” then,” said Cole.

Marcus was already heading forwards to the cockpit to check Baird’s vitals. “I sedated him whilst I did the stitching and afterwards to help with the pain. He’ll probably be out of it for another couple of hours at least, and then I’ll have to decide whether to put him under again.”

“Shit, Marcus, you actually sound like you know what you’re talking about,” said Dom.

“Hayman gave me a crash course in Baird-care,” said Marcus, looking at the readings on the portable monitor, that he’d wedged down beside Baird’s seat. The blond looked as bad as when he’d left him earlier, just as pale and just as worn. He was sleeping under two military issue blankets, with a pillow (taken from the Maran hospital) behind his head, still in the passenger seat because Marcus hadn’t wanted to try to move him back to the gurney.

“How bad is he, Marcus? Give it to me straight,” said Cole. He was obviously taken aback by Baird’s appearance too.

“I wish I knew,” said Marcus. “He has some pretty nasty internal injuries that Doc Hayman patched up, some muscle injuries and he bled a lot. They transfused pints of blood into him, and he coded twice, once on the way to Maran in the Raven, and again while they were operating on him. Since then he’s been stable, but he took five days to come round. I’m keeping an eye on his vitals, but I’m not a doctor. He’s clearly in a lot of pain, pretty much constantly, but he’s a stubborn ass and won’t let me up his pain meds any more than they are at the moment. He didn’t want to be sedated, but I talked him into it. Sort of. To be honest, he shouldn’t really be anywhere but a hospital bed right now, but we didn’t have much of a choice. I gave him all the time I could.”

“Yeah, I know you did,” said Cole. “Can’t we just keep him sedated until we get him back to Jacinto?”

Marcus shook his head. “No, this is strong stuff. If we keep giving it to him it could interfere with his breathing. Three doses in a row was all Hayman would allow and he’s already had two. I can up his IV pain meds, but we all know how addictive that stuff is. We’re going to have to wean him off it even now, once he’s properly healed up. The more we give him the worse the detox will be, and Baird’s been pretty adamant that he wants to avoid that.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Dom, his eyes flicking between Marcus and Cole. “We’ve all watched Gears go through it. It’s pretty unpleasant.”

“Yeah, and he keeps going on about how he needs to stay sharp,” said Marcus.

Cole chuckled. “Sounds like our Damon. He’s always worried about that brain of his.”

“We might need it. This ‘Dill isn’t going anywhere at the moment and I have less than no clue how to fix it,” said Marcus. “There’s no way we’re getting Baird out of here on foot, and I noticed you didn’t come here in anything with wheels.”

“We had a packhorse, but that got taken out by a Boomer in Parlessa,” said Dom. “Since then we’ve been burning the shoe leather, and it’s a long way from Parlessa to Etreya on foot. We bumped into your Doctor Hayman on the road and she told us you’d be coming this way.”

“Just as well, you’d have expected us to cross by the other bridge,” said Marcus. “The one that’s in pieces at the bottom of the Ettree river.”

“Yeah, it saved us a long walk,” said Dom.

“I’ll take a look at the engine,” said Cole. “I’ve been hanging around with Baird long enough to pick up a few things.”

Marcus nodded. “Be my guest. If you can get it running, that’s one less thing for us to worry about.” They also wouldn’t have to make a decision about getting Baird out of the ‘Dill to look at the engine. Marcus had no doubt that Baird could fix it, and would have already done so by now if he hadn’t been unconscious.

“I’ll watch your back,” said Dom to Cole. “There might still be grubs crawling around in those ruins. Marcus, you should get some sleep, man. You look nearly as bad as Baird.”

Marcus grunted. He did feel pretty wrung out. “Okay, I’ll sleep now, but we’ll take turns on watch rotation. Wake me in two hours.”

“I’ll give you four,” said Dom.

“Dom…”

“Come on, I know you’ve been keeping an eye on Baird round the clock,” said Dom. “We’re here now, so you can afford a few hours’ sleep.”

Marcus sighed. “Okay, I admit I could do with it.”

Dom nodded. Cole was already hunting down the tool kit that every ‘Dill had stowed behind a panel by the rear hatch. He grabbed his prize, opened the hatch and headed out to look at the engine.

Marcus laid himself out on the gurney, it being by far the most comfortable place to sleep at the moment. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep, he knew Dom and Cole would have their backs now. He was more than grateful that they’d come out to find them. Maybe, finally, their luck was improving.

***

Cole spent the best part of the next three hours up to his elbows in the ‘Dill’s broken engine. He was damned if he knew what was wrong with the thing. He’d checked all the usual culprits, broken fuel lines, cracked piston heads and cut wires. It wasn’t the most well maintained engine that he’d ever seen, but then Baird hadn’t had a chance to work his magic on it, however there didn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong with it. He gave an exasperated growl.

Dom was just coming back round from his latest stroll around the ‘Dill and was in time to hear him.

“No luck?” asked Dom.

Cole shook his head. “We’re going to need the resident genius for this one and I don’t think he’s up to it. Do you want to give Marcus the bad news?”

Dom checked his watch. “We’ll give him another hour. Maybe we should look around and see if we can get any of these other vehicles running?”

Cole wiped his hands on a rag from the toolkit and nodded. “There’s got to be one out there that still works. Preferably with room for all of the medical stuff that we need to cart around with us.”

Dom nodded. “We’ll need to stay within line of sight to the ‘Dill. I don’t want any grubs sneaking up on us.”

“Agreed,” said Cole.

Cole picked up his lancer which he’d had balanced against the fender of the ‘Dill whilst he’d been working. He approached the nearest of the abandoned vehicles on the road and popped the hood. It was a family saloon car, and still had a moth-eaten teddy on the back seat. Cole hoped the owners had gotten back to Jacinto okay. As he rounded the other side, he realised that the tyres were all flat.

“This one isn’t going anywhere,” said Cole.

“Let’s try that one,” said Dom, indicating a white van with his lancer.

It had one flat, but there was an intact spare attached to the back. Cole broke a window and opened the driver side door. He pulled the lever that opened the hood, and got his knife out to get into the wiring behind the steering wheel so that he could attempt to hot wire.

A few minutes work gave him the bare wires that he needed. He touched the two wires together and nothing happened. He sighed. For all he knew he was doing this wrong and he’d got the wrong wires. He was really missing Baird at this point. It was somewhat ironic that the only person who could save Baird, was probably Baird himself.

The kept trying various cars and vans but something seemed to be wrong with all of them. Despondently they trudged back to the ‘Dill. The sound of the hatch opening stirred Marcus from his sleep. He pushed himself up on his side, still looking a little groggy.

“Any luck with the engine?”

Cole shook his head. “It’s beyond me. Sorry, Marcus.”

“Not your fault, Cole. I shouldn’t have driven us into that ambush outside Clairette,” said Marcus.

Dom shook his head. “Shit, Marcus. You couldn’t know they were going to be waiting for you.”

“I could have guessed. The choice of route was my responsibility and I should have known that a valley was prime ambush country. I had a wounded man in my care and I should have been more careful.”

“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself, Marcus,” said Dom, his eyes earnest. “Come on, we don’t have time for this.”

Marcus shrugged and gave a non-committal grunt. “We need to decide what our next move is.”

“We checked out a few other vehicles, but we couldn’t get any of them running,” said Cole.

“We need Baird to wake up,” said Dom. “At least he might have an idea of what could be wrong, even if he just talks us through it.”

Cole shook his head. “I don’t know. I get the feeling he’s better off sleeping.”

“We may not have a choice,” said Dom. “If we have to carry him, we’ll never make it out of here alive.”

“I doubt he could take it anyway,” added Marcus.

A groan from the passenger seat of the ‘Dill cut short the conversation. Cole moved forwards and sat down in the driver’s seat, he wanted to be the first person that Baird saw when he woke up. He was pretty sure that Baird wasn’t going to be in a good mood when he came round. The blond engineer was frowning and rolling his head from side to side.

“Hey, Damon, are you coming back to us, baby? Come on, Cole wants to see those baby blues of yours.” Cole leant forwards so that he was facing Baird, and as close as he dared get.

Baird opened his eyes slowing and blinked at Cole. “Fucking hell, what did Marcus give me this time? I’m hallucinating Thrashball players.” His voice was raw and croaky. He hardly sounded like Baird at all.

“Naw, baby, I’m as real as they come,” said Cole and gave Baird a light pat on his right arm, just to prove it.

Dom and Marcus crowded into the doorway of the cab. Cole could see that Marcus had the medical kit at the ready just in case, but whilst Baird was definitely in pain, it seemed to be bearable for him.

“Shit, how long was I out for? Did we make it back to Jacinto?” asked Baird, glancing back at Dom and Marcus.

“Sorry, we’re in Etreya,” said Cole. “Dom and I heard about the hospital evacuation, so we decided to come find you guys.” He ignored the question about how long Baird had been out for, maybe they could sidestep that one a bit longer.

“Great, more idiots to join the martyr convention,” said Baird.

“A “thanks and nice to see you” would have been fine,” said Dom.

“Yeah, it’s awesome that you’re here, now can we fucking _not_ be here. This place is probably crawling with grubs,” said Baird.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem there,” said Cole.

“Let me guess, the ‘Dill broke down? Marcus, I could swear that I told you that I needed to fix the damn engine.” Baird’s voice rose in volume towards the end of the sentence, and his breathing quickened. Talking definitely hurt him and Cole was finding all this a bit painful to watch.

“Yeah, well pardon me for not letting my seriously wounded squad-mate kill himself by standing out in the rain and bleeding to death while fixing a ‘Dill,” growled Marcus.

“It’s not raining now,” said Baird. “Hang on, how long _have_ I been out?”

“Nearly a full day,” said Marcus.

Baird’s eyes went wide with realisation, and Cole waited for the inevitable freak out. Baird did not like other people making decisions for him.

“Marcus, you fucking bastard. You sedated me? You actually fucking sedated me? What? Were the groans of pain getting to you while you drove? You could have just ditched me back at the church, rather than drugging me into submission,” said Baird. Cole saw him wince the second he stopped talking, and then reach his good hand around his side. His eyes clenched shut and a clearly involuntary groan escaped his lips. “Shit.”

“If you’re done complaining, I’ll tell you why,” said Marcus, his tone even and resigned. Cole had expected Marcus to shout back rather than be calm and collected about it. After all, Baird had just accused his commanding officer of drugging him against his will in order to make Marcus’ life easier.

Marcus continued. “I had to put a couple more stitches in your side to repair the damage we did running away from the grubs. You were pretty out of it on the good stuff, but when you started to come round you were in agony. I put you under for your own good until the wound settled down again.”

“Oh,” said Baird. “I guess, thank you. I think.”

“Goddamn it, now I know you’re sick,” said Cole.

“Yeah, yeah, Baird said thanks, suck it up, you might never hear it again,” replied Baird. “You’re all fucking hilarious. Now someone help me up so that I can get the engine running again and get us all out of this shithole.”

“Did you listen to anything I said?” asked Marcus.

“If any of you had been able to get it running then we’d be moving by now,” said Baird. “So I’m pretty much our only hope of getting this thing working again. Now I know you’ve got a wheelchair in here somewhere, because I saw you stow it. Put me in it and wheel me round to the engine compartment.”

“You really want to go through that again?” asked Marcus, apparently referring to an incident that Cole hadn’t heard about.

“I keep telling you, I’m the only one who can do this,” said Baird. “Tape up my side so that I won’t pull out the stitches again, and up my pain meds if you have to so that I don’t pass out.”

“Woah there, baby,” cut in Cole. “I don’t think you want to do that.”

“Of course I don’t want to do it, that would be idiotic, but if I don’t then we’re stuck here.”

“When we get out of here, you’re going to teach me everything you know about engines,” said Cole.

“Not possible,” smiled Baird, attempting some bravado. Given his considerably weakened condition, it only half worked. “It would take too long.”

“I hate to say it, but he’s right. I can’t see another way of getting us out of here,” said Dom. “Cole and I couldn’t find another vehicle that would run. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack out there anyway.”

“But they might have salvageable parts,” said Baird, perking up slightly. “Cole knows enough about engines that I can tell him what to go looking for.”

Cole nodded. “Yeah, it shouldn’t be too hard to find something compatible. ‘Dills were built to run on commercial parts, right?”

“Yeah, it’s cheaper,” said Baird. “I never thought I’d be glad of a COG economy drive. Any large van of the right make should work.”

All eyes turned to Marcus.

“Okay, Baird gets to play with his toys,” he said after a long pause. “We’ve got a couple of hours before sundown. Let’s get Baird where he needs to be so that he can work out what’s wrong. Then we can decide what we do next.”

“Imagine me doing my victory dance,” said Baird, sarcastically.

“That was not an image that I ever wanted in my head,” replied Dom.

***

Baird was well aware that he’d just talked Marcus into letting him torture himself with a painful move to the engine compartment, followed by hours of work that he just wasn’t up to at the moment. Yeah, he was on stellar form right now, but honestly what else could he do? If he didn’t fix this ‘Dill no one else was going to.

Dom had gone to ready the wheelchair, leaving Marcus and Cole to get him to it. He’d closed his eyes again while the other three discussed the division of labour, and generally ignored them until they were actually ready to move. He looked up at the two Gears as they stepped back into the cab.

“No need to state the obvious, this is going to hurt,” said Baird. He threw off his blankets, using his good hand.

“’Fraid so,” said Marcus.

“Hayman did say I needed to get moving,” said Baird.

“Screw Hayman,” said Marcus. “She didn’t know that you were going to pull your stitches out.”

“Come on, baby, let’s get this over with,” said Cole.

Baird gingerly shifted forwards on the seat. He held out his good right arm and Cole grasped it to pull him up, while Marcus carefully supported his injured left side. Marcus was on that side because he knew where Baird’s worst injuries were and could ensure he didn’t hurt him more than he needed to. The agony as he got to his feet was intense and he swayed, causing Cole to tighten his grip.

“You okay?” asked Marcus.

“Do I look okay?” spat Baird. A rather familiar wave of dizziness was sweeping across him.

“No, but I need to know if you’re going to collapse on us or if we can walk you to the wheelchair,” replied Marcus, as helpful as ever.

“I can do it,” replied Baird, breathing hard. “Just not too fast, okay?”

“I don’t think fast was ever an option,” said Cole.

Baird just groaned, even being upright pulled on everything. “Shut up and help me.”

“Just put one foot in front of the other, baby. Me and Marcus have got you,” said Cole, and somehow Baird found that surprisingly reassuring. Marcus unhooked the IV bags and put them between his teeth to free up his hands, effectively rendering him mute until they got Baird sat down again.

Cole was a solid presence beside him on his right, and Marcus was being surprisingly gentle on his left. Baird felt every single muscle as he walked the few steps to the wheelchair, and gritted his teeth as Dom moved it in behind him. He could feel the cold sweat beading on his forehead as he sat down, Cole and Marcus not letting go until he was down. Really it was more a controlled fall than anything else.

“Fuck,” breathed Baird, his eyes closed and just sitting as still as he could until the sharpness of the pain subsided. His good arm moved to guard his left side, without really realising what he was doing. He couldn’t believe that just walking a few steps hurt this much.

Marcus was attaching the IV fluid bags to the hook on the chair that was specifically for them. Cole rested a hand on his right shoulder and no one spoke for a moment. Baird eventually found the strength to lean back in the chair and get himself a little more comfortable. He took some deep breaths and tried to get his heart rate back to something more normal.

“Do you need more pain killers?” asked Marcus.

“No, save it for the moment. It just hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“Give me the word when you’re ready to move out,” said Cole, positioning himself at the handles of the wheelchair. Whilst Baird would have preferred to move under his own power, he wasn’t stupid enough to actually try it. He needed someone to push the chair for him, and since Cole was more practiced at taking his abuse than either Dom or Marcus, the duty had apparently been given to the former Thrashball player.

Marcus was wrapping blankets around him, without him really paying much attention to it. He’d forgotten that it was cold outside and as he was less mobile than normal, he’d get cold quicker. Marcus had packed plenty of blankets, he remembered wondering what he was planning on doing with them all, but now he was pretty glad of Marcus’s anally retentive attention to detail. It wasn’t like he could put a coat on right now, that was pain he didn’t even want to consider after simply putting on a t-shirt sending him into paroxysms of agony. He was missing his armour though, he felt vulnerable without it, and his gun.

“Where’s my gun?” asked Baird.

“I’ve got it,” said Marcus. “No guns whilst sleeping, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” said Baird, “so that I don’t try to shoot the first person that I see. Come on, hand it over.”

He felt like a junky asking for a fix, but Gears just didn’t exist without their guns. Even back at base, he never, ever, went out without a gun. You just didn’t when the enemy dug up from the ground anywhere you stood on earth that wasn’t bedrock. No one was going to judge him for this behaviour, it was what it was and they all felt the same way.

“Let’s get you where you need to be and then I’ll hand it over,” said Marcus.

“Okay, let’s do this thing,” said Baird.

Much to his surprise, Cole once again moved round to his right side and Marcus to his left. They rather unceremoniously lifted up the wheelchair with him in it and began to carry him out of the ‘Dill and down the ramp.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” grunted Marcus.

“Yeah, I’d have thought it was kind of obvious,” added Dom, now taking point and looking around for potential threats.

“I’m not some Silver Era ruler that needs carrying on a litter,” said Baird. “Put me down!”

“Hey, this way we don’t have to bump you over every tiny stone,” said Cole. “Marcus filled us in on a few things. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Baird sighed, loudly. Really, what else could he do? His squad were apparently intent on humiliating him, so he’d just have to put up with it. They carried him around to the engine compartment of the ‘Dill and set the chair down as gently as they could. He could already feel the difference in temperature between the ‘Dill and the outside.

“Fuck you all,” said Baird. “Now give me my gun.”

Marcus handed over the snub pistol, and Baird checked the ammo situation. It had a new clip in it and one in the barrel. Marcus was always the professional, especially when it came to guns. He put it down at his side, with the safety on.

“Okay, let’s have a look,” said Baird, and immediately found the biggest flaw in their plan. He couldn’t see into the engine properly whilst he was sitting down. “Cole, help me up. Come round my left side, I’ll need my right to hang on with.”

“If you’re sure,” said Cole. Baird just nodded and prepared for more pain.

He levered himself out of the wheelchair with Cole’s help, which Dom had helpfully applied the brakes to as soon as they landed. Again the fiery pain lanced down his side and he had to take a moment just to be able to see straight. He grabbed hold of the engine housing and steadied himself. He was never going to be able to work like this.

“Okay, I give in. Press the button,” he ground out in Marcus’ direction. He’d know what he meant. It would mess up his brain a bit more, but he was already less than sharp and this was just an engine. If he couldn’t actually function then the engine would stay broken, so being able to work at all was going to have to take priority here.

He waited a few long seconds before he felt any change and the increased painkiller crept through his system. He could still feel the pain but it was less oppressive, and somehow less important.

“Okay, that’s better,” he looked down at the engine in front of him. It didn’t look too bad, which was annoying because he’d been hoping for something obvious and easy to fix. “Where are the fucking bullet holes?” he asked no one in particular.

Cole answered. “I couldn’t see any, and I spent a while looking.”

“We’re going to patrol the area,” said Marcus. “We’ll check back in an hour.”

“Sure thing, Marcus,” said Cole.

Baird closed his eyes again for a moment. His vision wasn’t quite right, another side effect of putting more drugs into his system. He tried to think logically about how a bullet could have got into the engine but not show any signs of being there.

“Cole, are there any bullet holes in the armour plating around the engine compartment?”

“Yeah, a couple, and a few bullet shaped dents too,” said Cole.

“Okay, that’s a start,” he said. “I need a trajectory. Poke a stick through the hole or something, and tell me where it comes out.”

Cole scrabbled around in the mud for a moment and came up with a car aerial. He poked it through the two bullet holes that he’d identified and Baird traced the path that the bullet might have taken. Normally he’d have solved this by now, but his brain was slower than usual, mired in the treacle of the painkillers that kept him operational. It was a little like being drunk and still trying to solve a complex math problem.

In other less sucky circumstances his brain would have provided him with an internal map of the ‘Dill’s engine. It would have been so good that he could almost have repaired the thing with his eyes closed. Not this time. He felt downwards with his good hand and immediately realised the problem with that course of action – he had nothing to hold himself up with. He grabbed hold again before he could tip over in a particularly embarrassing and painful way.

“Cole, I need you to support me while I go rummaging. My left arm isn’t working so well, and I can’t hang on and feel for the bullet,” he said. He was basically glossing over the fact that he could hardly move his left arm at all, and hoped Cole wouldn’t call him on it. Neither of them had the time right now to worry about whether his left arm would regain full function. He definitely wasn’t going to show anyone how much just standing hurt or cost him in energy. He’d had it ingrained at an early age that Bairds didn’t show weakness and for once that mindset might actually be useful.

Cole came around to his side and carefully held him while he rummaged around in the interior of the ‘Dill. He found a chip of metal on the engine block that suggested a bullet making a glancing blow. He wondered where it had gone after that, once again cursing the fog that was apparently filling his brain and slowing his mental processes to a crawl. He leant on the edge of the engine compartment and tried to remember the noise that it had been making before it stopped working. It was like something rattling loose, or hitting somewhere that it shouldn’t.

“Fuck,” he breathed, finally seeing it. “The bullet got sucked into the engine. That’s going to screw up everything, depending on where it ended up and how many pieces it’s in.”

“Did you just work it out?” asked Cole.

“I think so, pass me that wrench,” said Baird. “Let’s see how bad this is.” He persuaded his left hand to work well enough that he could accept the tool from Cole when he passed it up to him, whilst hanging on with his right. The limited movement from his left arm was becoming more of an issue the more he tried to do. He definitely didn’t have much in the way of fine motor control. It was just as well that he was right handed or he’d have been in real trouble. He was also glad of the fact that he’d repaired so many ‘Dills over the years that he could do a lot on autopilot.

It took him most of an hour to carry out the investigations that he needed to. It included a lot of swearing and a considerable amount of dropping tools, which Cole had to retrieve and hand back to him. However, although the ‘Dill was damaged, it was not unfixable. Unfortunately he was tiring quickly, and the more tired he got the harder it became to think. He dropped the screwdriver for the final time and realised that he’d slowed his work to a crawl.

“I’m going to have to give you a list of parts that we’re going to need to fix this,” said Baird, swaying slightly. He was beginning to feel light headed and he knew that he’d pushed himself too far.

“Baird, you need to sit down before you fall down,” said Cole. There was a firmness to his voice, which suggested that he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

“I need to fix this,” said Baird. He was sweating despite the cold. He leant against the fender and scribbled a list of parts on a scrap of paper that Cole had found in the bottom of the tool kit.

“Yeah, enough with the “I’m not hurting” act,” said Cole, taking the list from Baird’s weakening hands. He gently, but firmly pushed Baird back so that he was sitting in the wheelchair, with a little help.

Baird found that the moment he sat down the exertion of just standing caught up with him. “Now you come to mention it, I do feel pretty awful,” he said, glancing up at Cole.

Cole was reaching for his lancer however, because he’d just heard something. Baird had totally missed it, whatever it was, which was another sign that his pain meds were too high, but he too reached for his pistol. Then Cole relaxed again, because it was just Dom and Marcus coming back from their patrol.

“Marcus, you’re just in time to get the blond genius back to his post,” said Cole.

“Post?” asked Baird, feeling every ache. At this point pain was just a constant background, and he was used to it. That was a thoroughly disturbing thought, that he’d become used to being in pain. He sighed.

“That would be the gurney in the back of the ‘Dill until we can collect your parts for you,” said Cole, adjusting Baird’s blankets. Fuck, he hated feeling like a child that couldn’t do anything for himself.

“That actually sounds kind of nice about now,” said Baird, leaning to the left so that he could relieve some of the tension on that side. All of his energy was spent and he was having a hard time just keeping himself upright in the chair. His eyesight was giving him a few issues too, he seemed to be seeing double and two Coles was one too many. “Tell Marcus no more loopy juice. I’ll sleep just fine on my own.” He closed his eyes because the double vision was disconcerting and was beginning to make his head hurt.

There was a rumble of conversation between the other three Gears, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. He was just concentrating on not falling out of the wheelchair. He barely felt the transfer back to the ‘Dil, or when they lifted him out of the chair and back onto the gurney. He registered the blanket being placed over him, the straps being pulled across the bed and secured, but really didn’t have the energy to protest. He was too tired, in fact he was more than tired. He closed his eyes and slept.

***

“Is it just me, or does anyone else feel guilty that Baird basically just collapsed from exhaustion,” said Cole.

Marcus frowned. “Yeah, it’s not good for him.” He checked the IV lines, and got ready to change out the spent bags of fluid.

Dom was just shaking his head. “I feel like a real bastard. How’s he doing?”

Marcus checked the monitor. “Heart rate is up, blood oxygen is down. Neither of those are good things. And he’s sleeping so deeply that he hasn’t even moved whilst we’ve been talking.”

“A quiet Baird is not a good sign, and he’s too damn pale,” said Cole.

“Tell me about it,” said Marcus. Back in the hospital at Maran he’d watched Baird sleep for four days before he even showed any signs of waking, and it had nearly driven Marcus crazy with worry.

Marcus swapped over the empty bags for new bags of antibiotics and painkiller. As always he followed Hayman’s instructions to the letter. He moved on to checking the wounds on Baird’s side and arm. He was grateful to see no new blood and the dressings mostly still seemed to be clean and intact after Baird’s stint at messing about in the engine. He’d have to redo the ones on Baird’s left hand and upper arm because they were covered in engine oil and grease. He began to carefully peel away the old bandages.

“Dom, pass me that medical bag,” said Marcus, indicating the one which had the spare bandages in it. “I’ve got to replace these dressings before his wounds get infected.”

Dom handed Marcus the bag. “How are the medical supplies holding up?”

“Well enough. Hayman gave me a week’s supply, but hopefully we’ll be back at Jacinto in a couple of days at most,” said Marcus.

“Yeah, well I’d better get working on Baird’s shopping list then. I hear there’s a two for one special on car parts today,” said Cole, with a final glance back at Baird.

“I’ll come with you,” said Dom.

“I’ll finish up here, and keep an eye on Baird. Report back in half an hour. The sun will be going down by then and we’ll deploy the laser trips. Hole up for the night,” said Marcus.

Dom and Cole just gave a nod of acknowledgement and headed out the back door. Marcus waited until they were gone and then just for a moment, he allowed his shoulders to drop and he stopped putting up the front that he had been. Baird was worse now than he had been when they’d started out. All his good intentions had turned to shit and there was nothing he could do about it. He’d told the others that they’d be back at Jacinto in a couple of days, but he really wasn’t certain of that. If they encountered more Locust resistance then it could be longer, and the longer Baird was kept from proper medical care, the less chance he had of making it. There was just so much that could go wrong out here.

He rubbed at his eyes and got on with the job of dealing with Baird’s dressings. He collected himself back together as he worked. Soon he was back to his normal self, no one would have been able to sense his doubts about the situation, or that he wasn’t completely in control. This was something that he’d had considerable practice at, although he wished he hadn’t needed to.

He rested Baird’s arm back at his side and then wrote down the observations. Baird looked particularly vulnerable when he was lying strapped to the gurney, deeply asleep like this. All of Marcus’ protective instincts were in high gear and wouldn’t step down. Baird was part of Delta, and they would get him home. Anything else was just not an option.

It was then that he heard gunfire.

***

Cole and Dom found the make of vehicle that they needed with little trouble. The white van that they’d already checked out previously would have most of the parts they needed, although they might have to search out a truck to get the final things that were on Baird’s list. That could probably wait until tomorrow. The sun was going down fast and Cole was struggling to remove the carburettor from the van.

“Cole, we’ve got company,” said Dom, calmly. It was far more calm than Cole would have been had he spotted the grubs first. Dom pulled Cole down behind the van and they waited, hardly daring to breathe.

“Hell, I’d say that they’ve come looking for their buddies,” said Cole, in a whisper, as he and Dom watched half a dozen drones and a Kantus walk down the street. Grubs very rarely bothered to hide themselves, their tough hides were natural armour and even a drone would take a few shots before they went down.

Cole was aware that if they took out many more grubs here then it would be obvious to the Locust that there were Gears in the area. He could see that Dom was too from the way that he glanced back at the broken down ‘Dill.

 “They’re going to find the bodies of the bloodmounts any moment,” said Dom.

“Yeah, that’s not going to make them happy,” said Cole.

“We might have to take them down if they start heading in our direction. Let’s move right and keep an eye on them,” whispered Dom, indicating the concrete barrier that Marcus had used as cover before. Cole nodded his approval.

The two Gears moved along in a crouched run behind the barrier, staying level with the Locust troops. Eventually they ran out of barrier and either had to show themselves, or let the grubs carry on. Both of them would have preferred to remain hidden, because they didn’t need a fire fight at the moment, but it wasn’t their decision.

Once the grubs found the bloodmount corpses, the Kantus ordered the drones to fan out. Dom and Cole had little choice but to open fire. The grubs took cover quickly, although the Gears got a couple before the others could find places to hide. They concentrated their fire on the Kantus.

“This was such a bad idea,” said Dom, as shots flew over their heads.

“I don’t know, baby, I think we just need more firepower,” said Cole.

He’d just spotted Marcus, head down and running towards the fight. That was a sight that he never tired of – incoming back-up in the shape of Marcus Fenix. Marcus positioned himself to their left, flanking the grubs. Most of them hadn’t even realised that he was there, it was only when the Kantus took a shot to the head that the grubs began to realise that not all the fire was coming from in front of them.

With the Kantus down, it was just a matter of mopping up the rest of the drones, which they did in short order.

“Shit,” said Marcus with feeling. “Baird was right, this place is crawling with grubs and they’re going to work out that we’re here sooner or later.”

“Maybe we should hide the bodies,” said Dom.

Cole nodded in agreement. “Yeah, at least then they won’t know this is where the sons of bitches died.”

“Not much we can do about the bloodmounts, it would take more than we’ve got to lift them,” said Dom.

“Yeah, but the rest we can do something about,” said Marcus. “Okay, Delta, let’s get these bodies under some rubble and then head back to the ‘Dill. I don’t want to leave Baird on his own for too long, especially while he’s sleeping.”

Delta squad got to work on the unpleasant task of dragging locust bodies to places where they could be well hidden under rubble.

“You know that this isn’t going to buy us much time,” said Dom.

“I know,” said Marcus. “We’ll just have to hope that Baird feels up to another go at the engine in the morning, because we need to be rolling out of here tomorrow. Or we’ll have to come up with a plan B.”

“I thought we were way past B already,” said Cole, thinking about the broken ‘Dill and their wounded friend.

Marcus gave a humourless half laugh. “Yeah, maybe we are.”

“If we could just get out of this communications blackout, then we could call for evac,” said Dom.

“Or we find the Seeder and take it down,” said Marcus, stopping what he was doing for just a second as he seemed to consider it.

“That’s one hell of an ask, Marcus,” said Cole. He saw the appeal of the idea, but Seeders were big and tough. Unlike back at the House of Sovereigns, they didn’t have a Hammer of Dawn to help them take the monsters down.

“I know. Let’s call that plan Z,” said Marcus. “Baird will get the ‘Dill repaired and we’ll be moving again before we have to worry about it.”

“Fingers crossed, baby, fingers crossed,” said Cole.

***

Baird was still sleeping when they got back to the ‘Dill, which didn’t surprise anyone. Although it wasn’t a peaceful sleep anymore, his head was moving from side to side and he was muttering in his sleep. It wasn’t coherent enough to make out any words, but it certainly wasn’t a happy conversation that he was having with whoever it was. Dom watched him silently for a moment, while Cole and Marcus collected together the laser trips and other stuff that they were going to use to set up the perimeter. Marcus took the first load outside, while Cole finished up.

Baird whimpered in his sleep, and clearly said “no”, before the dream seemed to become worse. Dom had never heard Baird sound so vulnerable and it almost felt wrong to watch him like this, as if he was seeing something deeply personal from Baird’s private life.

“Do you think we should wake him?” Dom asked. “He’s going to tear more of his stitches out if this carries on.”

Cole came over to stand beside him. “Yeah, let me do it, but be ready to pull him off me if he takes it wrong. Even wounded, Baird’s a handful.”

“Okay,” said Dom. Apparently Cole was no stranger to Baird’s nightmares.

“Damon, wake up,” said Cole. “Come on, baby, you don’t need to pull anymore stitches.” It took a couple of goes and then suddenly Baird’s eyes snapped open. “Hey, it’s fine, Damon. No ghosts here. Go back to sleep, we’ve got your back.”

Baird didn’t seem to really wake properly at all, even with his eyes open. So he just looked at Cole for a few seconds, blinked heavily a couple of times, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep. It was a more peaceful sleep this time though, without the restless twitching.

“Ghosts?” asked Dom.

“Hey, it’s not my place to say, but Baird didn’t have the best childhood. They were rich, but there wasn’t much love between him and his parents. He hasn’t ever really told me what happened but I can guess from the things he’s said while he’s sleeping. Baird doesn’t talk about that shit though, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.”

“You got my word,” said Dom.

“Good,” replied Cole, leaving Dom feeling suddenly that he really did not ever want to get on Cole’s bad side, especially if it related to Damon Baird. Cole was apparently as protective of Baird as he and Marcus were of each other. He wondered if Baird knew.

***

Marcus gave both Dom and Cole a quick lesson in what to check on Baird’s monitors and how to write down the observations. That way they could all cover the night shift of Baird’s care and Marcus could get six hours of straight sleep. Cole took first watch while the others slept, Dom took over a few hours later and there had been no incidents. Finally, Marcus took last watch. Baird had slept through the night mostly. Marcus hoped that it had helped their mechanic get his strength back because they were going to need him today.

He heard Baird start to shift and then cough. Marcus moved quickly to get the head of the gurney into its raised position, that way the coughing would hurt less. Unfortunately the coughing also woke his patient.

“Thanks,” mumbled Baird, the coughing finally subsiding. “The other two sleeping?”

“Yeah, I’ll give them a bit longer,” said Marcus, quietly. Glancing at the two Gears sprawled in the front seats. Cole was snoring like a bear.

“Are we screwed if I can’t fix this damn engine?” asked Baird, suddenly.

“We’ve got a backup plan,” said Marcus, reaching for the bag that contained the rations. He had even fleshed out the backup plan a little the previous night with Dom and Cole.

“Is it a good one? Or is it actually just a glorified suicide run? Because I’ve worked with your plans before, Marcus.”

“We need to work out the details,” replied Marcus, handing Baird his breakfast.

“Oh, great. It’s all on me then,” said Baird.

Marcus noted that he didn’t complain about his breakfast this time, just held his hand out for the spoon that Marcus passed to him. Once again he didn’t seem particularly hungry though, so perhaps that was why. He ate a little more than he had the previous day, before giving up and poking at the contents of the pot.

“Do you guys have to keep strapping me down?” asked Baird, as he regarded the wide straps over the gurney. “I’m beginning to think you’ve got some kind of bondage fetish.”

There was a yawn from the front compartment, and Cole stretched out an arm. “Baird, baby, if you want to fall out of bed in the middle of the night then be my guest.”

Baird just frowned for a moment, and was unusually quiet. Cole occasionally seemed to have that effect on him, and Marcus always wished that he had the same ability.

“The drugs mean you’re sleeping more deeply and you won’t notice if you roll the wrong way,” said Marcus in explanation. It was exactly what Hayman had written in her Baird-care notes.

He looked over towards Cole, who had turned himself round to face them. Dom was still sleeping, but he’d taken the middle watch so his sleep had been more interrupted.

“You could have slept longer if you’d wanted,” said Marcus.

“No way,” replied Cole. “The Train gets up with the sun. And we’ve got more shopping to do.”

“Shopping?” asked Baird.

“Got to get you your parts, baby. Especially after last night’s set to,” said Cole, grabbing his own ration pack from the bag.

“What set to?” asked Baird. “Are you telling me that I slept through a fire fight?”

“You were out for the count,” said Marcus. “I wasn’t about to wake you when you couldn’t have helped anyway.”

“I prefer to know when my life’s in danger,” said Baird.

“Next time I’ll be sure to check with you before I run off to back-up the rest of the squad,” said Marcus, sarcastically.

“Excuse me for wanting to be kept informed of people shooting at us. The sooner we get out of this grub-infested shit hole the better,” said Baird.

“Now that, I agree with,” said Cole, tucking into his breakfast.

Marcus just grunted. The fact that Baird was still giving him lip was probably a good sign, and meant that he might have a hope of repairing the engine today. Baird continued to grumble about nothing in particular as they ate their breakfast.

“Time to wake Dom,” said Marcus. “We need to get moving on getting this thing running again.”

Cole gave the Gear a prod with his boot and Dom awoke with a start. Marcus tossed him a ration pack. “Eat up, then we’re moving out. Cole’s on scavenger duty with me, so you’re babysitting Baird.”

“Hey,” said Baird. “I don’t need babysitting. I just need someone to hold a gun while I work.”

Dom rubbed his eyes and stretched. “This is what happens when I’m the last one to wake up.”

“Yeah, I’m thrilled with my assignment too,” said Baird. “So what did you find so far?”

Cole presented Baird with the parts that he’d found so far, collected in a backpack. “Happy Christmas, Baby, don’t say I never get you anything.”

Baird rummaged through the bag, occasionally pulling out something to examine and making the odd grunt of approval. “Not bad for a first haul. Now go get me the rest and I might actually be impressed.”

“Hey, we’ll get them,” said Cole.

After that it was simply a matter of repeating the previous day’s exercise of getting Baird into a wheelchair and then carrying him round to the engine. Baird did his best to pretend that it didn’t cause him pain and the others did their best to ignore Baird pretending. He bitched about being lifted again, but Marcus wasn’t prepared to give in to Baird’s pride and risk more pain or pulled stitches. That Baird was doing anything other than lying in a bed or sitting still wasn’t something that he was happy about.

“Okay, stop to rest for at least ten minutes every half hour, whether you think you need it or not,” said Marcus, to Baird as he levered himself into position by the engine. Marcus caught Dom’s eye and received a nod of acknowledgement.

“You’re kidding me. I can’t keep stopping every thirty minutes,” said Baird.

“Working for a couple of hours yesterday knocked you out until this morning,” said Dom.

“Listen to the man, Damon. It might take a while, but at least you’ll be able to get the job done,” said Cole.

“It’s either this or we’ll be stuck here another day, and there are too many grubs around here. I need you to be functional and fixing stuff, not so damn broken that you’ve collapsed from exhaustion,” said Marcus, realising that it sounded harsh, but it was the truth.

He didn’t want to hurt Baird and make him feel like he was only there for his engineering ability, but at the moment Marcus needed him to be smart and not overwork himself. You just couldn’t be subtle with Baird or he’d find the loophole in whatever you said and exploit it.

Baird glared at him and gave him the finger, which was fine with Marcus. In fact, he’d been waiting for it.

Baird turned back to the engine. “Fuck you, Marcus, and your fucking mother hen routine. Go find me the rest of my parts and let me get some actual work done before “nanny” enforces nap time.”

Once Baird was reasonably happily up to his elbows in the engine, with Dom carefully positioned to make sure he didn’t fall over, Marcus and Cole went off to hunt down the remainder of the parts. Marcus could hear Baird griping all the way down the road, which actually reassured him at the moment. If Baird was complaining then, although he was injured, he wasn’t out of the game.

***

Baird found working in half hour chunks to be one of the more frustrating ways of repairing an engine that he had encountered. If he’d been uninjured he’d have told all of them to go fuck themselves, because no one told Baird what to do when it came to working on engines or anything else for that matter, but he wasn’t, so he let them boss him around. If he could just get back to Jacinto and have a few days recovery time then he’d be fine again and could screw around with engines to his heart’s desire.

Yeah, right, who did he think he was kidding? He knew full well that his injuries would require more than a few days’ rest to heal up. He was looking at weeks of down time until he was properly healed, and everything he was doing now was going to make it worse, from the pulled stitches to the increase in painkiller dosage. Hayman was probably going to kill both him and Marcus when they got back just for undoing half her hard work in patching him back together again.

His third half hour was nearly up. He dropped the screwdriver that he’d been holding and automatically started to bend down to pick it up. Dom stopped him.

“Are you really that stupid?” asked Dom, as he picked it up for Baird and put it back in his good hand.

“Are you really that much of an asshole?” replied Baird, his mouth pretty much on autopilot snark.

“I’m just trying to stop you from landing on your ass in big heap,” replied Dom. “Five more minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Baird, he set about working the screwdriver again. The fingers on his left hand would grip, but there wasn’t much strength behind them. “At least you’re only following orders. Marcus is just being a dick.”

“Hey, you’re still working and you’re doing a lot better than yesterday. By now you’d already had to be taken back to ‘Dill,” replied Dom. None of them were rising to his jibes, it just wasn’t natural. Normally Dom would have happily jumped in to defend his best friend, but they were all treating him differently because he was wounded.

“Don’t remind me,” said Baird. Privately he had to admit that Marcus did have a point. Half an hour of standing was enough to remind him that a few days ago he’d still been unconscious, and up until today, he’d only managed a single hour upright before collapsing. The most exertion he’d had had been tottering between his bed and a chair, otherwise he’d mostly been sleeping, which was actually beginning to sound attractive again.

“Okay, rest break,” said Dom.

Baird knew better than to argue, because, as Dom had proven after the first half hour, he had the strength of a new-born kitten right now. All he’d had to do was give him a tug in the right direction and he’d ended up sitting down in the wheelchair. This time Baird let Dom support him into a sitting position, and untangle the IV line from his screwdriver without comment. Baird felt for his pistol and found it still shoved into the side of the chair where he’d left it.

“If Cole and Marcus don’t get back soon we’re going to run out of parts,” complained Baird, looking at what he had left to do. It wasn’t much, but in his current state it would take him at least another half hour. He was sweating again, just from the energy he was putting into standing. Dom handed him a canteen of water, and he gratefully drank from it.

“Then you get to have a longer rest,” said Dom. “Which, to be honest, man, you look like you need.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Baird.

“Just saying what I see,” replied Dom.

Baird rolled his eyes. “You’re as bad as Marcus, with his delusions of having a medical degree.”

“Without Marcus, you’d probably be dead by now, Baird,” said Dom.

“Hey, don’t pull your punches, Santiago. Say what you really think,” bitched Baird. Unfortunately Dom was probably right, which Baird hated.

Santiago just gave him a shrug with a slight smile, and repositioned his lancer as he kept watch. Baird allowed his mind to wander for a bit, something that he never did normally, but the drugs were still making him prone to unusual behaviour. His brain was too busy making plans usually to just drift, this time it might actually have saved his life because he was the first one to catch the movement.

“Shit. Dom, your five o’clock,” said Baird, quietly.

He got a better grasp on his pistol and did his best to clear his head. There was a small patrol, probably out looking for their buddies and wondering why so many of them had gone missing around here. Marcus and Cole were nowhere to be seen, although Baird was pretty sure that they’d come running if they heard gunfire but it might take them a while to get back.

He was both literally and metaphorically painfully aware that his movement was limited, which meant that he was now putting both of them in danger. The grubs hadn’t seen them yet, probably because they weren’t expecting to find humans out in the open fixing a ‘Dill but it was only a matter of moments before they were noticed. He began to shuffle forwards, but he wasn’t going anywhere without help because he just didn’t have the strength.

Dom swore and pulled Baird’s wheelchair back so that it was tucked into the side of ‘Dill away from the grubs. Baird, moved without much warning, ground his teeth and did his best not to yell as the inevitable pain shot down his left side, leaving him panting. Dom crouched in the cover beside him.

“Shit, sorry, I forgot you can’t take cover in that thing,” said Dom.

“Yeah, next time, warn me before you drag me across the ground,” grumbled Baird, the pain subsiding now that he was still again. The drugs were still doing their job.

“I’ll just tell the grubs to shout out before they come round the corner,” replied Dom. Baird reckoned that Marcus had been giving him secret sarcasm lessons. “Are you up to firing that thing?”

“If I have to,” said Baird. “I couldn’t manage my lancer, but this is light enough that I can get a few shots off, although the reload is going to be slow with my left hand being shit at holding stuff.” He gave Dom an honest assessment of his ability because now was not the time to be pissing about with bravado. That might get both of them killed.

“Okay, I’m going to try to lead them away from here,” said Dom. “If I head down that street then it should intersect with the one that they’re on. Cole and Marcus should hear and come back me up.”

Baird shook his head. “Are you insane? That’s a five on one fight and we don’t know how far away Marcus and Cole are.” He’d just counted the drones, who were definitely coming this way. They’d trip over them if they didn’t do something.

“Then I’ll just have to keep moving,” said Dom. He handed Baird an extra couple of clips of ammo for his snub pistol. “Don’t shoot unless you have to. We don’t need the ‘Dill getting shot up again.”

“Really, I was just going to let them undo the last two hours of work,” ground out Baird.

Dom didn’t reply. He took off towards the side street, making sure that he was well hidden as he moved. Baird knew that this was Dom’s speciality, he’d been a commando in the Pendulum wars and if anyone could pull this off then it would be him. Unfortunately it left Baird alone, with only his pistol to protect him. He wasn’t even wearing his armour at the moment, which would simply have exacerbated his injuries, but it made him feel more than a little vulnerable and exposed.

He could see the grubs approaching and then one of them was down, bleeding in the street. A single shot rang out across the asphalt. Dom had got his first mark and was already drawing a bead on the second. It took a few shots this time, but the Drone was done for as soon as Dom zeroed in on it. The last three had taken cover and Dom needed to move to get a better line of sight. Baird could see that he was going to manage it, because the grubs hadn’t done a great job of digging in. Another one went down, as Dom moved and fired.

Just as Dom was about to deal with the last two, Baird heard the sound of something moving to his right. He flattened himself back in his chair as far as he could go. He was really hoping that it was Marcus and Cole, returning from their trip. Unfortunately his luck wasn’t that good – a drone was making its way along the side of the buildings, trying to outflank Dom. Apparently this was a scout who had been up ahead, separate from the main party.

Baird had seconds to decide what to do, because the drone was about to get line of sight on the other Gear, but if he did fire then his position would be given away. He took aim from behind the ‘Dill, aware that his eyesight was fuzzy from the drugs in his system and fired twice.

One of the bullets got the grub in the shoulder, but all that usually did was annoy them. He fired again, this time putting the whole clip into the thing, as it turned around to see where it was being fired at from. It raised its own Boltok pistol, just as Baird got a lucky headshot in. The grub finally hit the ground. His aim was shit at the moment. Normally he was better than this, and he’d have never survived this long if he couldn’t take out a grub in less than a full clip.

He set about reloading, which was a lot more trouble than usual, with his manual dexterity functioning poorly. He eventually got the clip in, and looked around for Dom. He could see the Gear coming back towards him. He was on the lookout for more grubs as he moved, but so far the field looked clear. Then there was growl of rage from behind Baird and he turned to see that whilst he’d been dealing with the first one, a second had sneaked around the other side of the ‘Dill.

“Shit,” he said, and did the only thing that he could think of to get into cover. He threw himself onto the ground, and pushed himself back behind the edge of one of the ‘Dill’s great wheels. The grub had seen him and was now coming towards him, a maniacal grin on its face. Baird fumbled with his pistol, and tried to raise his arm up enough to take aim. He was hurting from his rapid trip to the ground and had ripped out his IV, leaving blood dripping from his arm. He tried to push away again, but he had so little strength that even with his life at stake, he couldn’t persuade his body to move any faster.

The grub came around the edge of the ‘Dill and Baird got off a shot. It hit the monster in the chest, slowing it down for a second rather than stopping it. He was about to pour the rest of the clip into it, when another shot rang out and the grub fell down, its brains spilling out on the ground.

Marcus, Cole and Dom were suddenly running towards him.

“Shit,” said Marcus, upon seeing Baird, lying on the muddy ground. “What happened?”

“Patrol came nosing around,” said Dom. “I took off to lead them away, but there were more of them than we thought. One of them tried to flank my position and Baird took it out.”

“Which gave away my position and drew another one to me,” said Baird, and groaned. “Next time I’m just going to let you get shot. Are any of you going to help me up?”

Marcus nodded and he and Cole took a side each and levered Baird up from the mud as gently as they could, which to be honest, wasn’t that gentle. His IV line was dangling from the wheelchair and utterly useless at the moment, so no extra pain relief was going to be forthcoming until that was put back in - unless Marcus decided to knock him out with another dose of amorphan, but Baird was going to strenuously protest if that was even mentioned.

The mud was cold and it had seeped into his clothes, so he was actually quite grateful to be somewhere other than on the ground. At least the blankets that Cole was wrapping around him were dry, even so he began to shiver. That made everything hurt more. To make matters worse, Marcus seemed to be intent on prodding at his injured side.

“Anything hurting more than it was before?” he asked him in his usual gruff tones.

Baird shook his head. “Just my arm, where I pulled out the IV.”

He gritted his teeth. There was a reason why his pain medication was on a constant drip feed into his arm, along with an on-going infusion of antibiotics. The stuff that was already in his bloodstream would hold him for a while, but things would begin to hurt at unbearable levels if he wasn’t plugged back in soon. The shivering was just adding insult to injury.

“We need to get you back in the ‘Dill,” said Cole. “You’ll freeze your ass off out here.”

Marcus acknowledged with a nod of his head and that seemed to be all they needed to get into position and begin shifting him back inside the vehicle.

“I’ve got to fix the engine,” said Baird, weakly.

“Don’t even start,” said Cole, warningly.

It was very rare that Cole ever gave away the fact that he might care quite a lot about what happened to Baird, but when he did, the mechanic knew not to press his luck. If he didn’t want a long drawn out lecture on how he shouldn’t take stupid risks, then he should keep his mouth shut. This was one of those times, so he shut his mouth and concentrated on breathing. Cole was worried, and that usually worried Baird too.

Marcus didn’t bother to take off the t-shirt that Baird was wearing, he just took a pair of scissors from the medical kit and cut it off. Cole quickly hid the sharp intake of breath, as he saw the full extent of Baird’s injuries for the first time. They’d previously been hidden under his t-shirt. Baird found this interesting because he couldn’t exactly see them himself without contorting himself into positions that just weren’t possible at the moment. He needed a full length mirror if he was going to get the full picture, and to be honest he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

“Marcus, I had no idea you were into this stuff,” said Baird, half-heartedly.

“Learn something new every day,” replied Marcus, in a rare display of humour.

It was at this moment that Baird realised that he hadn’t just scared Cole with his near death moment with the drone, he’d scared Marcus and probably Dom too. In fact, the only person that he hadn’t scared was himself, and that was most likely because he was still on the adrenaline high. Once he’d come down from that, he’d be wondering how the fuck he’d gotten away with it too.

Marcus examined the IV site, where he’d pulled the needle out. “Dom, hand me the medical bag with the bandages and shit in it. Cole, somewhere in this ‘Dill is a pile of spare clothes that I raided from the hospital stores. We’re going to need new pants and another t-shirt.”

“On it, Marcus,” said Cole, just as Dom handed Marcus the medical bag.

Marcus cleaned up the wound from the IV being ripped out with something approaching a practiced hand. Then he damped down a wash cloth with some water and handed it to Baird to start cleaning all the mud off himself. He was fine with the dirt on the side of his face, but he had a bit of trouble reaching the areas on his left side and back where the mud had got under his t-shirt. He’d pulled off one of the dressings too, so had ended up with mud in places that probably weren’t good for him.

“Give me that,” said Dom, after he’d watched Baird weakly dabbing at a hard to reach spot.

“What the fuck are you doing? I’m not completely incapable. I can do that myself,” said Baird.

“Yeah, then why aren’t you?” asked Dom.

“Fuck it,” said Baird, and handed over the cloth. Marcus had been watching this entire exchange with wry amusement while he readied a new IV line and needle. Baird was doing his best not to take any notice of the large needle, but Marcus wasn’t exactly hiding it. Baird found himself just sitting as still as possible while people did things around him for a bit.

This was followed by Marcus re-siting the IV, so that Baird now had a fresh needle port in his arm ready for a new IV line. There was also some general re-bandaging and cleaning of mud out of stitches, once the new IV line was delivering pain medication and antibiotics again. Then the final act of humiliation was that Marcus and Dom carefully dressed him in a new t-shirt, and after cutting off his old pants, they helped him into the new ones.

Cole helped him to hobble to the gurney, and then to get onto it, where Baird gratefully lay down and let his eyes close. For a moment it was nice just to be still, even if his brain was trying to tell him that there was something that he’d forgotten.

“Shit, I’ve still got an engine to repair,” said Baird, his eyes snapping open again.

“I think I can take it from here,” said Cole. He threw a couple of blankets over Baird, who gratefully pulled them up around his chest. He was only just warming up again, and it was nice to have the extra layers.

“The fuck you can,” said Baird.

“If I can’t then you can have another crack at it when you’ve rested up,” said Cole. “You’re dead on your feet, baby, and that was before you took your mud bath.”

“He’s right, Baird,” said Dom. “I saw how tired you were at the last break. Let him have a go.”

“It’s like having a whole flock of mother hens pecking at me with you guys around. Aren’t you all supposed to be bad ass grub killers or something?” asked Baird.

“Pardon us for trying to keep you alive,” said Marcus. “We’ve got all the parts now. It’s just a matter of swapping them out.”

Cole nodded. “You know it, baby. It ain’t hard from here.”

“Whatever,” said Baird, finally having enough of putting up a front. “Wake me when you can’t get it to start.” He closed his eyes and ignored the others until he fell asleep.

***

It took Cole the best part of an hour to get the rest of the parts swapped into the ‘Dill. A fully functioning Baird would have done it in half the time, but Cole wanted to get everything right first time so was double checking all his work. Marcus couldn’t fault his logic there, they needed this to work and not spend more time working out why it wasn’t. Baird had got all the difficult repairs done that morning, so Cole really did only have to install the remaining parts.

Marcus and Dom took turns to patrol and keep an eye on Baird. Finally Cole closed the hood of the engine compartment.

“You done?” asked Marcus.

“Yeah, I’ve replaced all the parts that Baird had on his list and double checked all the cables. We should be good to go,” said Cole, wiping his hands on a rag to get the grease off. “Let’s go and give it a try.”

Marcus nodded, and the two of them climbed into the cab. Marcus pressed the button to start the ‘Dill. It made a chugging noise and then grumbled into life.

“Woohoo!” shouted Cole, with his trademark whoop, “we are back in business, baby!” Cole grabbed the tool box and stowed it in the rear of the ‘Dill.

“Then let’s get out of here,” said Marcus. “Dom, are we good back there?”

Dom poked his head through from the rear compartment, where Baird was still sleeping. “Baird’s all tucked in, Marcus. We’re good.”

Marcus put his foot on the accelerator pedal and the ‘Dill moved forwards. “So far so good.”

“Hey, Baird and I make a great team,” said Cole.

They moved out onto the main roads of Etreya, skirting the edge of the city and heading back towards Parlessa. They managed a good few hours of uneventful travel on the road before Baird woke up, in a foul mood as always, however something wasn’t quite right this time.

“Did you guys turn up the heat in here?” asked Baird.

Dom was already shaking his head. “No, it’s still the same temperature its always been.”

If anything, Marcus thought it might actually be colder in the ‘Dill, yet there was a light sheen of sweat on Baird’s skin. He frowned; he had a horrible suspicion the he knew what this was and exactly what had caused it. The first symptom of a wound infection was often an elevated temperature. Wounds weren’t supposed to be constantly reopened or doused in mud. Either of those two things could have caused an infection, or both of them together. Baird had clearly realised the same thing.

“Shit,” said Baird. “I’d really hoped that it wasn’t just me, because I am pretty much totally fucked if the antibiotics aren’t working.” He looked over towards Marcus.

“Why don’t you let us medical professionals be the judge of that,” said Marcus, his tongue firmly in his cheek and referencing one of Baird’s earlier comments about his medical qualifications.

“Yup, totally fucked,” said Baird.

The sergeant was looking up his notes from Hayman again. He was pretty sure that she had included something about wound infections. It had always been a risk, which was why Baird had been on the IV antibiotics to begin with, but the notes said that it was possible that the infection might respond to a different antibiotic. The solution was to change the antibiotics for different ones, and Marcus knew that Hayman had packed some for him, but equally that she hadn’t been able to spare as much of the second, less common medicine. They had enough to last them for a couple of days at most, but if they kept going then it should see them back to Jacinto, where Jacinto Med would have better supplies.

“I need to take a look and see if there’s an infection,” said Marcus. “Rolling around in the mud probably didn’t do you much good. We’re going to need the alternate antibiotics as well. They should be in that cooler over there. Dom, grab it for me.”

Dom moved over to get the cooler, while Cole looked on with concern. He was definitely disturbed by the situation and Marcus needed to distract him from his worrying.

“Cole, I’m going to need some help turning Baird on his side so that I can get a better look,” said Marcus.

“Sure thing, Marcus,” said Cole. He moved over to Baird’s bedside and began to undo the straps.

“I can roll onto my side on my own,” said Baird. “I’m not a complete invalid.”

“Yeah, but it’ll hurt less this way, baby,” said Cole, as he surprisingly gently helped Baird role onto his right side. Baird just sighed loudly with what was probably more defeat than exasperation.

Marcus checked the monitor. Baird’s temperature was up and so was his heart rate. It wasn’t dangerous yet, but it could easily become so if left unchecked. He noted the readings on the chart, and then got out the medical kit. An infected wound would need cleaning and re-bandaging. He peeled back Baird’s t-shirt and could see that the wound on Baird’s side that he’d re-stitched was weeping pink fluid. There was an angry red colour around the edges of the wound and when he touched it, Baird winced at even a slight pressure. It wasn’t a good sign.

“Definitely infected,” said Marcus. His tone was suddenly serious, and he began cleaning out the wound again with antiseptic. Under his ministrations he could feel Baird tense up. This had to be excruciatingly painful, but it seemed that the blond wasn’t going to give up his stoic front. The last time Marcus had needed to stitch the wound and clean it, he’d just knocked Baird out, but the engineer had made it clear how he felt about that. Marcus just worked as quickly as he could, pretending not to notice the way Baird’s breathing had speeded up and how he stifled groans of pain every so often. Finally he replaced the dressing over the wound.

Dom handed over the first bag of new antibiotics, and Marcus switched it for the ones they’d been using up until now. Baird’s breathing was returning slowly to a more normal rate as Cole helped him to roll over onto his back again.

“So we just wait and see if these new antibiotics work?” asked Cole.

Marcus nodded. “Yeah, they should start working in a couple of hours or so.”

“Or not,” added Baird, pessimistic as always. “Not all bacteria respond to the same antibiotics. Did Hayman give you more to try if this one doesn’t work?”

Marcus shook his head. “These are broad spectrum antibiotics. She thought that one or other would work for any problem we might have.”

“Oh yeah, the magic antibiotic fairies can cope with anything,” said Baird. “What a load of bull.” He shivered.

Dom and Cole exchanged a look, which apparently Baird noticed.

“Would you all quit looking at me like I’m about to die, it’s just a low grade fever. My internal thermostat is shot. It’s what happens when you have an infection,” said Baird, rolling glassy eyes. “Just get me the fuck back to Jacinto, so that I can have a comfortable bed in some hospital ward and sleep it off.”

 “Sure thing, Damon,” said Cole. “My turn to drive?” he asked. Although it was phrased as a question, Marcus was pretty sure that Cole wasn’t really asking his permission. Marcus gave him a nod anyway. He recognised that Cole wanted something to take his mind off Baird’s worsening condition and let him do what he needed to.

Marcus handed Baird a bottle of water, as Cole started up the engine. Dom headed up to the cab to act as Cole’s lookout, leaving the other two alone.

“Keep your fluid levels up,” said Marcus. Baird accepted the bottle and raised his head a little to drink from it, but even this seemed to cause him a lot of discomfort. Things were definitely worse than they had been a few hours ago when the pain medication had been doing its work to keep their patient comfortably numb, as witnessed by Baird’s long nap.

“How do you feel?” asked Marcus.

“How do you think I feel? Like crap,” said Baird. “I still can’t believe they picked you as squad leader over me. At least I wouldn’t ask such fucking stupid questions.” Baird shivered again, and clutched at the blanket.

“No, you’d just charm everyone into following you,” said Marcus.

Baird gave Marcus the finger with his good hand. Marcus just gave a dismissive grunt and pulled the straps back across the gurney.

“Marcus,” said Baird, and then hesitated. His voice was quiet so that the two Gears in the cab wouldn’t hear him.

“Spit it out,” said Marcus, impatiently.

“I know this is probably going to get worse before it gets better. And I know that the chances of this antibiotic being the right one are pretty slim. I need you to…” he paused again, his hand fiddling with the top of the blanket. “Shit. Just keep an eye on Cole for me. Someone needs to make sure he doesn’t just plough head long into every fight that he comes across. Stop him rescuing stray cats from trees, that kind of stuff.”

Whilst Baird’s usual brand of humour was present in the words, his eyes very clearly told Marcus that he meant the sentiment with all sincerity. The sergeant didn’t know whether to shout at Baird for daring to think that he might not make it back to Jacinto, be openly surprised that he actually cared that much about Cole, or tell him that of course he’d keep an eye on his friend. He settled for dealing with the most pressing issue.

“Baird, get this into your head right now, you’re not dying on my watch.” His tone was even, but would accept no argument. “This is Delta. We take care of our own. I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

Baird, being Baird, decided to argue anyway.

“You’ve got to be realistic, Marcus,” said Baird. “Wound infections kill more Gears than the wounds themselves and they move quickly. It’s just a matter of time before the fever either boils my brain or stops my heart. We’re still at least a full day’s drive away from Jacinto, maybe more if we get hit by the grubs again.”

Marcus shook his head. He wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to find out what Baird’s family had done to make him consider himself so worthless, but he wished that he’d been there to knock some sense into their heads. The Fenix family might have had their troubles, but at least Marcus had known that he was loved and that his father was proud of him. He doubted that Baird had ever had that.

“For a smart guy, you can be pretty damn stupid,” said Marcus. “We’ll be in Jacinto this time tomorrow and Hayman will be shouting at me for letting you get a wound infection. Now shut up and get some rest before I decide to knock you out again.”

“Oh yeah, like that’s going to solve anything,” replied Baird, with a sigh. He wiped his hand across his damp forehead and closed his eyes, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders. “Wake me if anything interesting happens between here and Jacinto.”

“Sure, Baird,” said Marcus, as the other Gear fell into sleep again.

Marcus left him to it. Baird needed the sleep right now.

***

Baird slept fitfully, with torn dreams flitting through his brain. It was like watching several movies all cut together in thirty second intervals, and the problem was that most of them came from the worst bits of his life. The slide show of edited lowlights was almost more exhausting than being awake, and he was glad when someone shook him awake. His first reaction was to hit out, but his body immediately informed him that would be a bad idea.

He blinked and consciousness returned sufficiently that he remembered where he was and why he was sleeping so badly. Apparently heavy duty painkillers and a fever led to screwed up dreams. He heard a dying word on his lips and knew he’d been talking in his sleep. He blinked up at Marcus.

“Shit, sorry,” he murmured. “I don’t feel like I’ve even slept.”

“It’s been about three hours,” said Marcus. That sounded about right, because Baird’s t-shirt was soaked with sweat and he felt far worse than he had done earlier. His head was now thumping with a completely new source of pain and his whole body ached. Given the amount of pain medication that he was on, that was worrying.

“You were shouting in your sleep,” said Marcus.

“There goes the remains of my dignity,” Baird grumbled, his voice weak.

Outside was the sound of an explosion, quickly followed by another one. Marcus didn’t seem that bothered by it, but he could hear Cole and Dom exchanging targeting information, followed by the ‘Dill’s guns firing.

“Who’s shooting at us?” he asked. “Sounds like Reavers.”

“Yeah, a couple of Reavers picked up our trail once we got out into the open,” said Marcus, as if it wasn’t something that Baird should worry about.

Baird blinked heavily; it was hard to stay awake at the moment. Was it his imagination or did Marcus look concerned? Was that concern for him, concern about the Reavers shooting at them, or maybe both?

“Water?” asked Baird. He was very thirsty and practically snatched the bottle out of Marcus’ hand as he passed it to him. At least it would have been a snatch if he’d had the strength to put behind it, but he didn’t. He drank about half the bottle in one go. The ‘Dill lurched to one side, and so did the gurney under Baird. Marcus kept it steady and then went forwards to the cab.

“They’re getting closer,” he heard Marcus say.

“Fewer buildings to hide behind,” said Dom. “We’re going to be sitting ducks in the open country between here and Parlessa.”

“We need a new plan, Baby,” said Cole.

“Shit,” said Marcus.

“Told you so,” muttered Baird.

“Thanks for your input, professor,” said Marcus. The man had good ears. “We need ideas. If anyone’s got any, throw them out there now.”

“We need to hit those Reavers,” said Dom.

“Too late, Baby,” said Cole. “They’ve already told the grubs where the party is. We’ve got a roadblock up ahead.”

“Turn us around,” said Marcus.

“On it,” said Cole, manhandling the steering wheel. “I don’t know if we can find a way round this, Marcus. We’ve already tried the side roads and there are more Reavers out there now.”

“We have to,” said Marcus. There was a glance back towards Baird and then something was said quietly. Baird struggled to hear it, but he caught the end. “…he’s burning up.”

So now he knew how bad things were. Marcus had finally admitted that Baird didn’t have much time, so someone needed to come up with a plan to get them out of this mess, now.

“Ordnance,” mumbled Baird. He just wasn’t able to shout at the moment, he was barely able to keep track of reality. It was having a disturbing habit of fading out into his dreamscape and then he’d have to pull himself back, anchoring on Marcus’ voice.

Marcus appeared to have teleported next to him again, but Baird knew that he just hadn’t been aware for the intervening period.

“What about it?” asked the sergeant.

“We’re not getting out of here without backup,” said Baird. “Can’t call backup because of the Seeder. We need to take the Seeder down. Fill the ‘Dill full of whatever explosives we’ve got and then put a brick on the accelerator. Ram it into the Seeder with a full tank of gas. Call for help and watch the Ravens fly in. Easy.”

He was breathless just from explaining his plan and his heart was beating far too fast. It wasn’t the adrenaline, it was the fever raising his heart rate and making him tired, disconnected.

“We don’t even know where the Seeder is,” said Dom.

Marcus frowned. “No, but we know where the jamming began and where it was strongest.” He grabbed a map of the area from one of the bench storage bins, and took out a pencil. He began marking on the map where they had encountered the greatest interference and the highest concentration of grubs.

Baird had already worked it out. “Etreya. It’s in fucking Etreya.”

Marcus looked down at his map. “Yeah, that’s my reckoning too.”

“Are you telling me that we’re going back the way we came?” asked Cole.

“Do you need it on an engraved invitation? Back to Etreya, Cole. That’s where the fucking Seeder is and that’s where we need to be,” said Marcus. Baird vaguely registered that the pressure might even be getting to Marcus before he closed his eyes again.

The last thing he heard before he was dragged under into a slightly deeper sleep was Cole saying: “I thought you said this was plan Z.” He didn’t awaken for some time after that.

***

Cole was on the road back to Etreya and he wasn’t at all happy about it. “I thought you said this was plan Z,” he shouted back to Marcus.

“It’s been promoted,” said Marcus, who was looking back at Baird. “He’s out again.”

“That can’t be a good sign,” said Dom.

“His temperature’s up, that’s a worse sign. The new antibiotics aren’t working,” said Marcus. “That Seeder has to be taken down, or we’re going to lose him to this damn infection.”

“Shit,” said Cole bashing the steering wheel out of frustration. They needed to be on their way back to Jacinto, not hatching some plan to take down the local Seeder. Baird needed a hospital and doctors who actually knew what they were talking about. Part of Cole wanted to just turn around and ram the roadblock, screw the consequences if it took them one minute closer to Jacinto.

He snatched a glance back at his friend and could see that Baird was sleeping restlessly again. He wasn’t quite sure when he and Baird had formed this bizarre friendship that they had, but it had probably been some time back in those first few days of active duty. He’d unwittingly stopped some guys from beating on Baird in a toilet block the week before they were deployed, and after that he’d taken more of an interest in the blond. Cole was pretty sure that Baird’s mouth would continue to get him into more trouble, and everyone needed someone to watch their back. He soon found that his squad mate’s abrasive personality hid a sharp wit and perceptive mind, and Cole had enjoyed the challenge of getting to know Damon Baird. It had taken quite some time, and some days he still wondered if Baird even realised that they were friends.

Since the toilet block incident, they’d seen enough action and saved each other’s hides enough times that they owed one another a few hundred times over, although they’d both long since stopped keeping score. But they’d never had to deal with the other one being so badly injured, and Cole didn’t know what to do with himself. He remembered once when Baird had been setting charges to blow a bridge and the first one had ended up going off early. Baird had ended up with a slight concussion out of that little adventure, but nothing too serious. Cole had been worried sick for days, and that was about as bad as things had ever been for them.

He supposed that they’d been lucky, they’d lost half their squad at the House of Sovereigns before Marcus and Dom found them. It could easily have been them rather than their squad mates, Rojas and Gyules. The fact that they’d been lucky until now didn’t help Baird one bit though, or make Cole feel any better about their situation.

Marcus was thudding around in the back of the ‘Dill now, opening up the ammo crates and taking an inventory of the explosives. They’d need to know what they had to work with.

“The Reavers are coming back round,” said Dom.

“Okay, hit them if you can. Cole, concentrate on getting us back amongst some cover and then we’ll head in towards the Seeder. We’re going to need somewhere with some cover to get this thing rigged up right and the resident explosives expert isn’t available to help us, so we’re on our own this time.”

Baird was good with explosives, just like anything else technical, but all of them had enough knowledge to be able to wire a trigger up if needed. Dom probably had the most experience of the conscious members of Delta, from his commando days, but Marcus was no novice at blowing stuff up either. The problem was going to be finding somewhere quiet enough that they could offload and get their ordnance rigged to blow.

Dom opened fire on the nearest Reaver, one which Cole knew he’d already managed to wound earlier. If he could just keep the ‘Dill steady, then Dom would be able to take it down this time. Cole concentrated on the road and heard the reassuring sound of gun fire, followed by “yes!”, meaning that Dom had hit his mark. The Reaver dropped from the sky, landing in a blood-soaked heap of twitching limbs. Dom turned his attention to the next one.

“One down, baby!” shouted the former Thrashball player.

Cole aimed for the old quarter of town. It had narrow streets that they’d already negotiated once to get out of Etreya, and he could use the remains of the buildings to hide behind. It would make it more difficult for Dom to hit his targets but right now, staying alive was more of a priority than taking down the other Reavers.

He took a corner at breakneck speed to avoid another rain of incoming fire from the second Reaver, and regretted it as Baird moaned in his sleep. He’d momentarily forgotten just how much pain Baird was in and how bumping him around wasn’t going to help. Marcus steadied the gurney.

“Watch the turns, Cole,” said Marcus. “I’d like to get to the Seeder before we destroy the ‘Dill.”

“Sorry, Marcus,” Cole shouted back.

“Where is this damn Seeder anyway,” said Dom, as he let off a volley of gunfire at the Reaver.

Marcus stepped forwards into the cab of the ‘Dill. “Over there,” he pointed, and Cole could see why. They were coming down a slight incline and it gave them a better view over this area of the ruined city. The light was just beginning to fade, giving the sky a dusky appearance, but they could make out something organic, moving around behind a building less than a mile away.

“Shit, I’ve never seen one that big,” said Dom.

“That’s probably why it’s been screwing up coms for miles around,” said Marcus.

“Have we got enough stuff to make it go boom?” asked Cole.

“Maybe,” said Marcus, which didn’t fill Cole with confidence. Their squad leader was looking at the map again.

“Damn, that thing is ugly,” said Cole.

Marcus pointed at the map. “It’s in Tyrus Square, probably the only place big enough to hold it. There’s got to be a squad of drones protecting it, at least.”

“And the rest,” added Dom. Cole could see what Dom had caught sight of now, and it wasn’t good. There had to be an entire platoon of grubs down there, of all shapes and sizes. This was very bad.

“How are we going to get past that lot?” asked Cole.

“We’re not,” said Marcus, with certainty. “All we have to do is carry out the plan that Baird gave us and stand well back.”

“Shit, the Reaver’s coming in for another pass,” said Dom and aimed his guns again. This time he hit it in the soft underbelly and the thing dropped dead on a ruined building a few feet away. It was close enough to give Cole a small scare that it could have easily dropped down on the ‘Dill instead.

“Last one down for now,” said Dom.

“Nice work, Dom,” said Marcus. “Cole, get us as close as you can to that thing without drawing their attention. We’ll park up somewhere safe and rig this thing to blow. See if you can find us somewhere undercover where we can at least keep Baird comfortable until we can medevac him out of here.”

Dom looked over at his sergeant and best friend. “What are we going to do if this doesn’t work, Marcus? We’re giving up our only way of getting Baird out of here. There’s no way we’ll make it from Etreya to Jacinto on foot.”

“I know,” ground out Marcus. “But there is no backup plan. This has to work.”

Dom gave a shake of his head, but said nothing. Cole didn’t exactly feel happy about it, but at this stage what other choice did they have? He looked around for somewhere to hide the ‘Dill until they could rig up the explosives. He was rewarded with a narrow alley between two buildings, one of which had partially collapsed across it, creating an alcove where they could park up that was taller than the vehicle. It would be good enough and there were a few reasonably intact buildings nearby that might be enough shelter to use as somewhere to look after Baird while they carried out the plan.

Dom headed back to help Marcus and the two went through the large collection of explosive ordnance that Marcus had collected before he left the hospital. Cole had to say that it was quite an impressive pile that he’d amassed.

“What the hell was all this stuff doing in a hospital?” asked Dom.

“Mostly it’s collected from the wounded and would have been taken back to Jacinto if the grubs hadn’t shown up. Some of it’s from the defence cache, in case they needed to hold off the grubs while they evacuated. I found some laser trips and other booby trap stuff that kept us safe while we were holed up for the couple of nights we were on the road before you found us,” said Marcus. “There’s some bigger stuff in here too. What do you think, Dom?”

“I think we should blow that fucking Seeder to hell,” said Dom, as he began to assemble a trigger mechanism. He glanced over at Baird. “This would be a hell of a lot easier with his help. Fuck, he’d love this.”

Baird rolled his head from side to side in his sleep, and showed no signs of waking. Cole sighed. He really hated seeing his friend like this. Baird’s lips moved, groaning and saying the parts of words every so often.

“I know, but he’s too sick to help us,” replied Cole to Dom.

He took out a cloth and wet it down with some water, before placing it on Baird’s forehead. Cole had no idea if it would help in any way, but his mother had done it for him when he was sick. He seemed to remember it being soothing, so perhaps it would make Baird feel slightly better and even cool his rising temperature a little. He didn’t want to make him too cold and give him a chill on top of everything else, but it might yet come to packing ice around him to bring his temperature down. He hoped not, because he wasn’t even sure that they had enough ice left amongst the various medical coolers.

Cole did his best to make sure that Baird was as comfortable as he could be, and then helped Marcus and Dom to wire together the biggest bomb that he’d ever seen. It was also one of the strangest because it pulled together every single bit of explosive ordnance that they had. They were building a Frankenstein’s monster of a bomb, all held together with duct tape and scavenged bits of wire.

Had he been awake to see it, Baird would have either been horrified by what they were doing or pretty damn impressed. Instead he lay shivering and twitching from bad dreams, moving restlessly. Even when he did briefly open his eyes, Cole could see that he wasn’t really aware of what was going on. He probably didn’t even know where he was, because he said something about a geography field trip, drank some water and fell asleep again.

It took them at least an hour to rig up their improvised explosive device, with a concussion trigger that would go off as soon as the ‘Dill hit the Seeder. Then it took another half hour for them to locate somewhere that they were happy to transfer Baird to until the Seeder had been destroyed. The main criteria were that it needed cover to hide behind and a roof, which in any other city probably wouldn’t have been so hard. However, Etreya had seen some serious fighting because it was at a major river crossing, and it had taken more than its fair share of mortar attacks from both sides. They found a tattered house that suited them half way down the street, and moved all of the medical equipment that they needed into it. It was another slow process.

The last thing to do was to move Baird. This time they had two of them to carry the stretcher and another to hold up the IV liquid pouch. It was much more effective than Marcus’s early attempts at bumping their patient across uneven ground, and probably more comfortable for Baird. The blond briefly opened his eyes to roll them around his surroundings, before letting his lids drop back down. He muttered some things that were too indistinct for Cole to hear.

They placed the stretcher on the ground, tucked into a corner, well away from the windows. Cole put another blanket over Baird to ward off the cold of the evening air. He was shivering again, but his temperature was still rising. This wasn’t the most salubrious of locations, the floor was littered with the discarded possessions of the people who had once called this home. A mouldy looking couch and armchair sat in the middle of the room, facing towards the remains of what was probably once a television. Cole didn’t care what the state of the place was, it was simply a defensible location.

“Cole, Dom,” said Marcus. “You stay with Baird.”

Cole immediately shook his head and he could see Dom was about to object too.

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Marcus. “Baird needs protecting. As soon as this thing goes off, the grubs are going to be looking for where it came from. That means it’s going to be crawling with them round here. You need to keep him safe and make sure the Ravens can land. I’ll get the ‘Dill on its way and then I’ll make my way back to you.”

Dom didn’t look at all happy. “I don’t know, man. You’re going to have to get close enough to know that it’s going to hit. It’ll be a suicide mission on your own.”

Marcus didn’t flinch. “I know, Dom. But I don’t think two of us going in there is going to make any difference.”

“You’d have a gunner,” said Dom. “You’re just being stubborn and over protective. Like always.”

“Don’t start with me, Dom,” said Marcus. “Chain of command.”

“You’re not pulling fucking rank on me,” replied Dom. “I’m coming with you. End of discussion. Besides, next to Baird, I’m the best one of us with explosives.”

“I think all I need to do is make them go boom,” said Marcus, an edge of humour in his tone.

“Me and Baird will be fine on our own,” said Cole, with a glance back at his friend. “We’re kind of used to it just being us two, and you need someone to watch your back more than I do.”

Marcus sighed, clearly not used to being told what was going to happen. “Fine, since I’m overruled, we’ll do it your way.”

Dom just gave a nod of acknowledgement but said nothing.

“You got everything you need, Cole?” asked Marcus.

“Yeah, I’m set, baby. I’ll take good care of Baird, and as soon as that Seeder’s down, I’ll call in the Ravens,” said Cole.

“Okay, come on, Dom, let’s get going.” Marcus gave a glance towards Baird, as he moved towards the door. “We’ll be back here before you know it.”

Cole remembered that the two of them, Marcus and Baird, had come a long way together and he doubted that their relationship would ever be exactly the same again after this. Somehow they’d all shifted from being mere squad mates to becoming people who relied on each other, he’d even hazard at calling them friends. Baird didn’t have many friends.

Dom made eye contact for a moment, silently wishing him luck. Then Cole was left alone with the worryingly silent form of Damon Baird, who had transitioned from restless into still. Cole was actually more worried about Baird’s survival than that of either Marcus or Dom in that second. At least Marcus and Dom could fight, whereas how Cole fought Baird’s enemy, he had no idea.

***

Marcus didn’t want Dom there with him, but he knew when to give in to his best friend. Occasionally he just wasn’t going to win the argument, and this was one of those times.

“He saved my life,” said Dom, unexpectedly as they walked back to get the ‘Dill.

“Who saved your life?” asked Marcus.

“Baird,” said Dom. “I never expected it of him. He was injured and he could have been killed, but he shot that grub that was coming for me and another one nearly killed him because of it.”

“I hope you’re not doing this out of some misplaced sense of guilt, because we’ve been saving his ass since Maran,” said Marcus.

“Nah, it’s just that maybe I’ve had him wrong all this time. It’s kind of a front, all that annoying acid that he spouts,” said Dom.

“Yeah, I think I only got that a day before you did. He just can’t help himself. If it’s too easy then he’s not happy,” said Marcus.

They reached the ‘Dill and Marcus climbed into the cab.

“Who said that you were driving? You drive like an old woman,” said Dom.

Marcus glared at Dom. “You should have seen me running a Locust roadblock a couple of days ago. Stop complaining and get in.”

Dom shrugged but went around to take up the gunner’s position. “You realise that we’re driving a bomb, right? If we get hit then we’ll be half way to heaven before we even know that we’ve left the ground.”

“No, I’d forgotten. Thanks for the reminder,” replied Marcus, with a roll of the eyes. He got himself comfortable in the driver’s seat, and switched on the engine. Reassuringly, it purred into life. It didn’t have to last much longer now, just get them to the Seeder and then it would be in pieces like the grubs.

“Ready?” Marcus asked Dom.

“Whenever you are,” said Dom.

They rolled out of their hiding place. It was a little while before any grubs noticed their presence, but once they did, it was like driving through a pinball game. If they dodged one way, then they got pushed back in the opposite direction at the next junction. They weaved their way through pockets of resistance as best and quickly as they could. The only saving grace was that they weren’t driving very far. Dom also did a good job of taking out as many of the bad guys as he could, leaving them with no doubt that they meant business.

Finally they reached a point close to the Seeder where Marcus thought that they might have a chance of pulling it off. Dom set the trigger as Marcus ensured that the accelerator was depressed and locked with a metal rod against the steering column. The grubs were still firing at them and Marcus realised that the ‘Dill wasn’t going to make it unless they helped it out with some covering fire.

“Trigger’s set, Marcus,” shouted Dom.

“Dom, get behind that wall and cover the ‘Dill,” shouted back Marcus.

He saw Dom comply and then went to release the handbrake. It was just at that moment that a grub drone decided to make a hero of himself and slammed the door into Marcus’ face. The Gear fell back into the cab momentarily disorientated and now rolling towards the Seeder. The ‘Dill was getting up to speed and Marcus knew he had to get out of there, but the drone had decided to try to climb in too now. He took a better grip on his lancer and revved up the chainsaw, slicing it into the drone with all the strength that he had. Locust blood spattered across the cab of the ‘Dill and Marcus shoved the body out of his way.

He gripped onto the edges of the door and took a leap of faith to the moving ground. He hit it hard and ending up rolling into a crouch. It took him less than a second to realise that he was a sitting duck out in the open now and needed to move. He caught the movement before he realised that it was Dom heading for his position and shouting at him to move. He got to his feet as bullets began to whizz past his head and ran towards Dominic as fast as he could manage. His left ankle was giving him pain, but it was nothing compared to the kind of pain that a hole in the head would have given him.

“Shit, Marcus,” said Dom, as he fell into the cover of a house’s wall beside him. “I turned around and you were gone.”

“One of the grubs didn’t want to play nicely,” replied Marcus.

“There she goes,” said Dom, indicating their ‘Dill, and laying down more covering fire to protect the vehicle.

“Shit, we’re too close,” said Marcus, looking at the distance between their cover position and the Seeder.

“No time to move back, and we’ve got Nemacysts,” said Dom. The living mortars that looked like armoured, fleshy bombs with trailing legs were heading in their direction, creating inky air behind them.

Dom and Marcus opened fire, knocking the missile locust out of the air before they could get near enough for the detonations to hurt. Marcus was only barely aiming, there were so many Nemacysts coming for them that he could just shoot and expect to hit something. They just needed to keep shooting them down until the Seeder was toast and then there’d be no more Nemacysts either.

Dom swore as one of the mortars exploded a little too close, kicking up dust and sending shrapnel towards them. He took half a step back, but quickly started firing again. Any let up would leave them vulnerable to another detonation.

“How long?” asked Marcus. He’d lost sight of the ‘Dill in the blackness of the atmosphere created by the smoky Nemacyst discharge.

“I can’t see it,” said Dom. “It should explode as soon as it hits. Maybe another minute?”

Then Dom and Marcus were deafened by the sound of a large explosion. A wave of flames headed towards them, engulfing everything in the wake of the tide of fire. Any grubs that were in the way were turned into Locust torches, and suddenly much less of a problem for Delta. The air smelt of ash and burnt flesh.

Marcus and Dom threw themselves to the ground behind the wall and Marcus prayed that they’d done enough to destroy the Seeder. Had it taken down the monster? Or had it been hit before it could reach its destination? For now he just concentrated on breathing in the heated air and patting out the flames that were blossoming on his uniform. He coughed hard, inhaling smoke and heard Dom beside him doing the same. They needed to get out of here before they both died from smoke inhalation.

Marcus staggered to his feet, his ears still ringing from the explosion and dragged Dom up too.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. Dom just nodded, and the two moved shakily towards where they’d left Cole and Baird.

***

Marcus and Dom had been gone for about twenty minutes and Baird’s temperature had been rising steadily over that time. Cole knew that if it went any higher, then the result was probably brain damage. He resorted to stripping the blankets off Baird’s body, regretting the discomfort that he was causing but knowing that it had to be done. The doctors didn’t always think that such rapid cooling was a great idea with a fever, but Cole wasn’t left with much else that he could do. They’d exhausted the supply of different antibiotics and nothing else that they had with them would work.

He’d just finished another round of checks on his patient when Cole saw the explosion and felt the resulting shocks through his boots.

“I hope they got out in time, baby,” he said to himself and then put a finger to the button on his headset that would activate the radio link. This was the test. If the Seeder was gone then he should now be able to contact Jacinto.

“This is Cole, come in HQ. I hope you’ve got your ears on Anya, because we need a Raven evac asap.” He then began to repeat the message, until on his third run through he got a reply. Relief flooded through his body and he sagged against a wall for a moment.

“Cole!” said Anya’s voice. “Where are you? Command’s been going crazy. Jace and Sam got back days ago with the Maran hospital convoy.”

Cole gave a deep throated laugh, he was so happy just to hear Anya’s voice.

“We’re in Etreya. Marcus and Dom just took down the Seeder that was jamming the coms. We need a medevac to Jacinto asap. I’ve got Baird here with me and he isn’t looking so good,” said Cole and he gave Anya the coordinates of their position and a quick rundown of Baird’s condition.

“Cole, we already have Ravens in bound to your position. KR Eight Zero should be with you in fifteen minutes,” replied Anya.

“I look forward to seeing them,” said Cole. “We’ll be here waiting, got nowhere better to go.”

“Same here,” came a familiar voice. “We should make it back in time to bug out with you, but don’t wait up. We’ll catch the next ride if we have to.”

“Marcus!”

“Not so loud, Cole,” said Marcus. “Dom and I both made it and we’re fine, if a little toasted around the edges. Back with you in ten. Fenix out.”

After that it was just a matter of making sure that the Raven didn’t get shot up too badly before landing, which was child’s play as far as Cole was concerned. He positively enjoyed shooting the overly confident grubs that walked into his firing line, and never felt like he’d be overrun. He would have given his life to protect the injured Baird, but it never looked like it would come to that. Dom and Marcus made it back to the landing zone just as the Raven was getting ready to take off. They jumped on board seconds before the helicopter had been about to leave. KR Eight Zero headed back to Jacinto with its cargo on board.

Once there, Baird was rushed off into the depths of Jacinto Med, with Marcus a few steps behind, because he’d been officially in charge of his medical care up until this point. Cole and Dom were left to pace the waiting room, and desperately hope that they hadn’t been too late to save that most precious, and sharp instrument that was Baird’s brain. Two hours later, Marcus stepped into the waiting room, his armour missing and a tired look on his face. His shoulders were slightly slumped.

Cole frowned. “Oh no, please don’t tell me…” he began, but Marcus shook his head.

“No, Cole, it’s okay. Baird’s a tough one. I wouldn’t describe his condition as good, but Hayman thinks he’ll pull through now that we’ve got him back. He’s in intensive care, but that’s mainly to monitor the new antibiotics and keep his temperature down. All his injuries have been cleaned and dressed. Hayman chewed me out, but I think I’ll live.” Marcus sat down heavily, clearly tired to his bones.

“Can I see him?” asked Cole.

“Probably. He’s still unconscious,” said Marcus, closing his eyes. “Talk to Hayman.”

“No you don’t,” said Dom, grabbing hold of Marcus and hauling him to his feet. “If you fall asleep here then you’ll give yourself a bad back. Anya’s allocated you a bunk, so you might as well use it.”

Marcus groaned and stretched. “Okay, okay, I’ve got the message. The two of you should get some rest too.”

“Yeah, as soon as I’ve made sure that Baird’s properly tucked in,” said Cole, his hand on the door, ready to go and find Hayman.

Cole pulled open the door and Jace and Sam tumbled through. Word travelled fast in Jacinto.

“So what’s the news on blondie?” asked Sam, getting straight to the point.

Marcus gave her the rundown of Baird’s injuries, since she and Jace hadn’t been informed exactly how badly injured Baird was. “Hayman thinks we made it in time,” said Marcus. “He’s in intensive care, but he’ll pull through.”

Sam let out a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay, so he lives to snark another day. I was really worried there for a moment. I should have known that he was too bloody minded to die on us.”

“Yeah, that’s about right,” said Cole. “I’ll catch up with you all later. Right now I’ve got to go check on him for myself.”

***

When Baird woke up, it was a slow drawn out process. First there were sounds and then there was awareness of the sounds meaning something, finally there was light on his closed eyes. He couldn’t peel his lids open though, everything was too heavy. There was also the sound of an annoying incessant beeping sound. It was rhythmic and sounded important, but it was also extremely irritating.

“Anya’s pissed off at Marcus,” said a familiar voice. “Nothing new there, I guess. She reckons you should have all come back with the convoy and it wouldn’t have made that much difference to your condition. I don’t know. It’s hard to judge when I wasn’t there. I reckon she was scared that she might have lost him and is taking it out on Marcus. She’ll come round. Those two are all over the place.”

Cole. He had no idea why he was giving him the story of Marcus and Anya’s love life.

“Sam came by. She says to hurry up and wake up because her rat bike’s sounding rough again.”

That would be because she never did any maintenance on it. He’d have to give her some lessons in that at some point. He couldn’t keep replacing parts all the time to keep the thing running. It was a good bike, but it needed more love from its owner.

“I’d have a look but you know my skills are pretty basic, and I’m spending most of my time sat in the hospital at the moment, keeping you company.”

Why would Cole be sitting around the hospital? Was something wrong with him? Hang on, no, he said that he was keeping someone company. Baird would have frowned if he’d been awake. Was he sick? Was it him that Cole was keeping company with his inane chatter? That seemed to have a ring of truth to it.

He considered that for a moment, but he was tired. He decided to sleep on the problem and maybe he’d be able to work out what was going on when he felt better. He felt hot, achy and weak at the moment. It was a familiar feeling, but he couldn’t place why. He just needed more sleep and then he might have the answer. Moments passed and even that slight awareness left him.

The next time he awoke was different. Life came in with a rush. Suddenly he was aware of things happening around him and he didn’t know where he was or what was happening. There was beeping and talking and pain. There was a lot of pain, especially down his left side as he tried to move.

His eyes snapped open, desperate to get some idea of what was happening to him. The beeping was getting faster and people were talking more loudly. He felt hands on him and he struggled to free himself from their grip.

“Baird, you need to calm down, we’re in Jacinto. We made it back to Jacinto Med,” said the nearest voice. His eyes met dark crystal blue ones.

“Marcus,” he breathed. He forced himself to stop struggling and start to get his heart rate under control.

“Yeah, asshole, Marcus,” replied the sergeant. He looked over at someone else who was standing nearby in a white coat. It was the older woman that he remembered from the field hospital in Maran.

“If you could try to be a little less violent in your awakenings then that would help your recovery,” said the woman. “I don’t want to have to redo any more of your stitches, or deal with another wound infection.”

Baird gave a slight nod, and realised that he was still dead tired. He sighed with a parched throat. “Water?” he asked.

Marcus held the glass and positioned a straw so that he could drink. It was like déjà vu from Maran.

“You’ll be pleased to know that we got the infection under control and with rest, you should make a complete recovery,” said Hayman.

Baird glanced around himself. “Fuck, this ‘s ‘tensive care,” he croaked. He could barely raise the energy needed just to look around, but he knew he was hooked up to every medical monitoring machine known to man and had tubes where none had been before.

“Yes, you’ve been quite ill Corporal,” said Hayman. “And you still need round the clock observation, so for the moment, and until I’m completely happy that your condition is stable, you’ll be in intensive care.”

“Jus’ wanna sleep anyway,” said Baird. “Don’ care where. ‘Least it’s not a ‘Dill.” He closed his eyes, and once more fell into the waiting arms of sleep. This time at least he knew that he was safe in Jacinto, with his squad watching over him.

***

Marcus couldn’t help but smirk a little at Baird’s words before he fell asleep. He guessed that the engineer wasn’t that bothered at the moment about which bed he was in as long as it wasn’t moving. To be honest, he’d just been happy to get Baird back to Jacinto in one piece and before his heart stopped from the fever. He settled himself back into the chair beside Baird’s intensive care bed and waited.

Cole walked in a couple of hours later. He’d been spending most of his time here, but Marcus liked to take his turn as well. Cole was going to be somewhat annoyed when he found out that Baird had been awake, even briefly and he hadn’t been here to see it. Marcus decided to get it over with and informed Cole of this as he took his seat.

“Damn, he had to pick the one time that I’m out of the room,” said Cole.

“Hayman reckons he’ll be waking up more now. We’d better come up with some plans to keep him occupied. The last thing we want is a bored Baird on our hands. We both know where that leads,” replied Marcus.

“I hear you, baby,” replied Cole. Usually it led to trouble, and Baird tinkering with stuff that he shouldn’t. “What is there that he can do in bed and in a hospital?”

Marcus thought about it for a moment. “I guess our options are reading about Locust intelligence or stuff that needs fixing.”

Cole nodded. “Yeah, but he’s also got one damaged wing, so I’m not sure his fine motor skills are going to be up to much for a while.”

Marcus agreed. “Okay, then it’ll have to be Locust intelligence. I’ll see if Anya can help us out. She was complaining the other day that they didn’t have enough analysts, maybe she can get us some files that need to be looked over.”

“Good idea, Marcus. At least we can keep his brain occupied for a while longer and give his body the time it needs to heal. Of course if he so much as thinks about getting out of bed, he’ll have the full disapproving might of Delta to deal with, right?”

“Damn right,” confirmed Marcus.

***

Days passed and Baird slowly spent more time awake. He was transferred out of the ICU and down to a ward for other Gears recovering from internal surgery and wound infections. Baird was still the one with the most severe injuries, but he was slowly healing. The stitches had closed properly and the skin was beginning to knit, eventually leaving only some scars behind.

But even though he was awake more, everything was viewed through a veil of painkillers. At some point they’d been upped again and everything had become slow and soft for Baird. He hated it, and because Baird hated it, Cole hated it too.

“When can I come off these drugs?” Baird had asked, his words slurring at the edges and running together. It was a question that he’d asked before, but Cole had just deflected and hadn’t answered properly. There was a long pause, and the next words were said carefully. “Can’t think, can’t even see straight.”

“Hayman says we can start stepping them down tomorrow,” said Cole.

Baird was starring off into the distance and had lost the thread of the conversation. “What?”

“Hayman says we can start stepping down the drugs,” said Cole.

“Good. I can’t think straight. I can’t even see straight,” said Baird and went back to staring into the distance. “Did I already say that?”

“Yeah, Damon, but don’t worry about it,” said Cole.

“Fucking drugs,” said Baird, he was clearly distressed. Even his emotions were being affected by the painkillers. Baird very rarely showed that he cared about anything, and never showed that something upset him. “Want my brain back. Don’t care if it hurts.”

Cole decided that enough was enough and went off to lobby the nurse on duty to start the regime of decreasing the painkiller dose that afternoon. Of course that had its own problems. As Hayman had said from the start, the painkillers were addictive if taken for too long and at too high a dosage. On the way back to Jacinto they hadn’t had much choice in giving Baird more painkillers, just to get him to function well enough to fix an engine. Now Baird was paying for it. His body was used to the high dose it had been on for days, and now it wasn’t getting it.

Baird entered withdrawal on only the second day of stepping down, and after that things went from bad to worse. He was wracked with tremors and cramps, but knew that there wasn’t anything that he could do about relieving the pain. Hayman wanted to step back up and manage the withdrawal more slowly, but Baird was adamant that he wanted off the drugs as quickly as could be safely managed. Cole and Marcus tried to talk him into taking a bit longer, but he wouldn’t accept anyone’s advice and was determined to get back to his usual sharp self rapidly.

Cole hated to watch Baird in such obvious agony, but he wasn’t going to walk out on his friend at the moment either. Baird may well be doing this the hard way, but he still needed support. The only pain free periods that he had were after his regular painkiller dose, when he was finally able to get some sleep and relief from the otherwise constant withdrawal symptoms.

“I did warn you,” said Hayman to Marcus, as he took his shift to sit with Baird. Cole had already been with Baird for several hours, doing what little he could to help ease Baird’s discomfort.

“It was either up his pain meds or get stranded in Etreya,” said Marcus.

Cole gave a nod of agreement.

“Fuck you all,” said Baird, weakly. He was the centre of their attention at the moment. He was pale and sweating, with dark rings around his eyes. He shivered, and groaned as another cramp ran through his already aching body. “I don’t need a fucking audience, or another fucking lecture on how I did this to myself. Now would you all please just fuck off and leave me to my fucking misery in peace.” He curled onto his good right side, and screwed his eyes shut.

Cole exchanged a look with Marcus, and neither of them obeyed Baird’s instruction to leave. Dom would have been here too, but Anya had finally tracked down a lead on his missing wife, Maria. Baird had actually understood, which was so out of character that it had worried Cole somewhat that he had received some sort of brain damage from the fever after all. That was slightly unfair of course, Cole knew that Baird had a good heart, it just struggled to get noticed under his usually abrasive demeanour.

Hayman shook her head, made a note on the chart at the foot of the bed and left to see to her other patients.

Cole dropped into the seat that was sat at Baird’s bedside, while Marcus made sure the curtain was drawn around their corner of the ward. They’d noticed that their friend wasn’t keen on others seeing him in this state well before his comment about not needing an audience.

“You should drink some water,” said Cole, holding out the glass with the straw towards the patient.

“I’ll just throw it back up,” said Baird. Every time he tried to eat, that was pretty much what happened. His appetite hadn’t been good before the withdrawal had started, but now it was non-existent, something else which worried Cole.

“Just sip it,” said Marcus.

“Your advice is noted, and respectfully, you can go screw yourself,” said Baird, his voice muffled by his pillow.

Cole sighed and put the water down on the bedside table. He checked his watch again, although he’d only checked it minutes ago and knew exactly when Baird’s next dose of painkillers was due. “Not long now, baby. Just hang in there.”

“That’s what he said in Maran when he was torturing me by wheeling me across a field of rocks the size of boulders,” said Baird, pointing accusingly at Marcus.

“We got you home didn’t we,” said Marcus.

“Jacinto is not home,” said Baird. “Nowhere is anymore. But, yeah, pat on the back, guys, for doing an awesome job of getting me back to Jacinto in such good shape.” He groaned again, as another wave of cramps hit. “I am so fucking tired of this shit.”

Anya pulled back the curtain just as Baird finished cursing. “I’m guessing things haven’t improved much.” She was carrying a thermal flask, which she placed down on the bedside table. She was still in her uniform, so not off duty yet.

“Fantastic, another person to watch me writhe around in agony,” said Baird.

“Don’t mind him,” said Cole. “He’s understandably in a bad mood. It’s good to see you, Anya. Did you bring it?”

“Yes, it was tricky but I found some,” she opened the flask and poured a little of the steaming, aromatic liquid into the cup that was also the lid.

“What is it?” asked Marcus.

“Chamomile, ginger and peppermint tea,” said Anya. “It’s supposed to be good for soothing an upset stomach.”

Baird pulled a face.

“You’re such a child,” said Anya.

Cole just took the cup and helped Baird to sit up a little so that he could sip the liquid. He didn’t ask if Baird wanted to drink it, he just held the cup to the shivering man’s lips. Baird rolled his eyes and gave in, taking a few sips.

“My Mama swore by this stuff,” explained Cole.

“Tastes like pond water,” said Baird.

“Shut up and drink it. It’ll help. Thanks, Anya,” said Marcus.

“As if some stupid herbal remedy is going to solve the problem,” said Baird, collapsing back on his pillows. “Might as well call the witch doctor in and get him to take the pins out of his voodoo doll.” He stifled another exclamation of pain and did his best to bury his head in his pillow. This was followed by muffled swearing.

“I’ve got to get back to Control,” said Anya, a concerned look in her eyes. “Just let me know if you need anything else and I’ll do my best to find it. Baird actually has a lot of favours owed to him, so it’s surprisingly easy to get people to help. Certainly easier than I thought it was going to be.”

Marcus said his goodbyes to Anya and then he and Cole settled in for the long haul. Neither of them were going anywhere at this point, and it didn’t matter what Baird said or the insults that he threw at them.

About two hours later, the nurse appeared with Baird’s regular dose of pain medication. Baird did his best not to let them see how grateful and desperate he was for this, but it was hard to hide. He sniped at the nurse to get a move on in a way that wasn’t even normal for him.

As the drug hit his system, he relaxed. All the taught lines of pain disappeared from his face and he uncurled his body, sighing in relief.

“That is the good stuff,” said Baird.

“Yeah, baby. You should get some sleep before it starts to wear off,” said Cole.

Baird nodded, exhausted as always, and closed his eyes. Marcus and Cole watched their friend fall asleep rapidly. Finally they too could relax for a while, at least until the cycle began again.

***

It took three days for the drugs to leave his system and the constant cramping to stop. There wasn’t a lot that anyone could do for Baird during that time. Tea and a cold flannel to wipe the sweat away was about the most that they could manage. Despite Baird’s earlier assertions, the tea did help to calm his stomach and he was able to keep very small amounts of bland food down. It eased Cole’s worries if nothing else, but Baird could see that he wished that he would eat more. He’d definitely lost weight, and fighting off the infection had taken more energy than he had to spare.

The addictive pain medication was replaced by something less addictive, but unfortunately not as effective. The only good thing about this was that his injuries had healed a lot and so the pain was already less than it had been. Cole and Marcus were still hanging around, using their considerable size to intimidate the medical staff into letting them stay by his bed at all hours. One of them might be pulled away for routine duties, but the other was always around. Baird wished he could say that he didn’t need them, but their presence did help; whether it was by keeping him occupied by bringing him files of grub intelligence that needed analysing, something that must have come from Anya, or just waking him from the inevitable nightmares that he suffered at the moment.

Cole knew him well enough to realise that as soon as he started getting better then boredom would be a problem for him. So having something to do kept his brain occupied, and stopped him dwelling on the constant low level pain from his healing body. Picking up knowledge about the grubs had been something of a hobby at first, but it had come in so useful on their various deployments that he’d begun to take it more seriously. He often wondered if he was the only Gear out there that read the intelligence bulletins that the COG put out to its army. It was all stuff like “kryll like the dark and will kill you unless you stay in a well-lit area”, “a theron guard is usually armed with a torque bow” and “corpsers are armoured, aim for the soft underbelly”. It was basic stuff, mostly, that got sent to the Gears.

The files which Anya had sent over were definitely more interesting. They seemed to detail some theories about the grubs which he’d never come across before, things about their structure and leadership. They suggested that there was a leader, someone who was more than just a General. There was also information on a language that they’d found a few examples of and they were trying to put together some sort of decryption of it. Baird found it all fascinating, and a lot of it needed analysis and conclusions drawing from raw data randomly collected by Gears. One file noted that they needed more technically minded Gears to collect interesting artefacts, and Baird’s own name was there as someone that they intended to ask to help out. He wasn’t that surprised. When he got back on duty he might just do it for them.

However, right now he was more concerned about the lack of movement in his left arm and hand. The shrapnel from the explosion back on the Tarla Plain had ripped into his left arm muscles and now they needed to heal so that he could get full movement back. Hayman hadn’t thought that it would be a problem, but it didn’t seem to be happening. His left arm was still weak and he couldn’t grip properly with his hand.

Cole and Marcus had taken him down to his daily physiotherapy session in a wheelchair, Marcus pushing and Cole walking alongside. It still surprised Baird that anyone cared about him at all, let alone enough to hang around and push him to physio sessions, but apparently he wasn’t to be trusted on his own. His own walking was coming on well and it wouldn’t be long before he could scrap the wheelchair entirely, but long distances were still beyond him for the moment. Right now, it was his arm that was causing everyone consternation. If it didn’t heal then he couldn’t be a Gear, and if he wasn’t a Gear, well no one really wanted to think about that, especially not Baird.

It had all started out as a fairly routine session which, admittedly, he’d been dreading. He was so damn fed up with things getting no better that it was beginning to grate on his nerves. Somehow both Cole and Marcus had picked up on that, maybe he hadn’t been hiding it that well. Now Cole was worried, and Marcus was being a dick by annoying the physiotherapist. Baird just couldn’t take it anymore. He knew that they both meant well, but it wasn’t helping.

“How exactly does repeating the same exercise over and over help him?” asked Marcus in a less than friendly tone, with a little annoyance behind it.

“Sergeant…” began the female physio, Lieutenant Elsie Serrano. She was actually pretty tough and clearly dealt with a lot of stubborn Gears. “I’m grateful that you’re here to support Corporal Baird, but you need to let me do my job. I’ve rehabilitated hundreds of Gears and got them back out in the field.”

“Then why isn’t he getting any better?” asked Marcus.

“Yeah, I mean shouldn’t he be making some progress?” asked Cole.

“Enough,” Baird shouted, as he failed to grip the wooden rod that they were using to practice with for the umpteenth time. “Cole, Marcus, just get out of here. I don’t need you hovering around me while I fail. I mean it, scram.”

“Damon…” began Cole.

“Out!” shouted Baird.

For once, Marcus and Cole did as he asked and left the room. Perhaps it was obvious that he wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer this time.

“Sorry, they’re idiots,” said Baird, turning back to Lieutenant Serrano. “Can we try this again without their “help”?”

“Of course,” said the Lieutenant. “I do understand the frustration, but you’re getting there.”

Baird shrugged. “I’m not making much progress. I can’t grip or manipulate objects and I’m not going to be much of a Gear if I can’t hold my gun or fire it.”

“It won’t come to that, we just need to keep working. But even if it did, I heard that you were good at fixing things,” said Serrano. “I’m sure the Engineers would welcome you to their ranks.”

“Digging latrines? No thanks,” said Baird. “I’m not really a desk job kind of guy either.”

“Like I said, you just need to give it some more time,” said Serrano.

“Yeah, right. It might help if Marcus and Cole stopped hovering all the damn time too,” said Baird. “Fuck knows why they’re hanging around anyway.”

“They’re your friends.” The physio repositioned the equipment for Baird to try again.

“Cole maybe, but I’m pretty sure Marcus thinks I’m an asshole,” said Baird, trying once again to grip. This time he succeeded. “Huh. Maybe I am getting somewhere.”

Lieutenant Serrano smiled. “Maybe you just needed to take the pressure off yourself.”

They didn’t really make any more progress that day but very slowly the arm began to work better, and Delta began to back down a little from their panicked state of alert about their wounded squad member. More days passed and little by little Baird, and everyone else began to believe that he’d be back shooting grubs in no time. His appetite improved, even his nightmares got better and Hayman started talking about a discharge date.

Dom returned from chasing his lead on Maria, with little to show for it. Marcus took him out to get drunk. It didn’t help but at least it didn’t make anything worse. Baird supposed it made everyone feel like they were doing something.

Then orders came through that Marcus was being assigned Jace and a new recruit to the squad while Baird convalesced, which sort of threw everyone. They’d all been so used to thinking of themselves as Delta, that when more orders came in for Baird, saying he was going to be Sigma’s new squad leader, no one knew quite how to feel about it. That was the army for you, it took units that functioned well as a team and then ignored that, splitting them up as it suited them.

Baird supposed that they couldn’t just have the entirety of Delta waiting around while he got better, but he’d sort of got used to being Delta. After all, Fenix had saved his life, so he sort of owed the guy. Or something. That and the others were at least used to their social misfit engineer’s way with words. He had finally gotten to the point where he felt they understood that he didn’t always mean what he said. Orders were orders though, and Sigma was at least his.

Just less than a week after that, Baird found himself standing outside the hospital. Cole was no more than half a step away in case he should stumble or feel worse again. It was going take him a little more time before he could stop treating Baird like glass, but Baird reckoned it was baby steps. He had nearly lost him, and although Baird wasn’t good at the touchy feely stuff, he thought he knew how he would have felt if their positions were reversed. Even if he wouldn’t have been quite as solicitous by this point. Every second phrase from his lips at the moment was “Cole, I can do that myself”. Still, they’d be back to the merciless teasing before long, it was just how things worked.

He had to admit that he still felt weak, but he was extremely glad to be out of Hayman’s clutches. The rest of Sigma were meeting them later, and it looked like the current idea for the light duties that Hayman had ordered involved driving a Centaur on patrol. No one who could hold and use a gun really got proper light duty these days, unless they were physically missing limbs or something. The COG didn’t have enough men for that. It wasn’t exactly what Baird would have wanted to be doing but it was better than sitting around the hospital, or the barracks.

“You okay?” asked Cole, as he watched Baird looking around at the Gears marching to where they needed to be.

Baird nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Come on, we’ve got a war to win.”


End file.
